Poll result: You love Gmail’s Android app, but even that’s not always enough

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority

Email is just one of the many areas in which Google would like to dominate our online activity. It’s doing a pretty good job, too, with Gmail being the most popular email provider on the planet. Google pushes it to Android users by having it pre-installed with the OS, but we were curious as to how many of you actually use it on your phone. We asked you in a poll, and your answer was decisive.

The whole question arose after Android Authority editor C. Scott Brown voiced his dissatisfaction with Gmail for Android, especially compared to its iOS counterpart and other email apps. Key issues for him include the inability to mark emails as read from the notifications, the lack of a Do Not Disturb schedule option, and the inability to default to the All Inboxes view. He had other equally reasonable critiques of the app, especially for users with high email volumes and multiple accounts.

The accompanying poll to that piece about your own Gmail for Android use garnered a huge reader response. Check out the results below.

As the chart above shows, not only do over 90% of respondents use Gmail on their Android phones, but a huge majority (almost 70%) have it as their sole email option.

It is interesting to see that a quarter of Gmail for Android users also use another email app, although it’s hard to read too much in to that. After all, many of us are required to use a particular email app for work purposes, and that could cut both ways in skewing these stats.

It isn’t a coincidence that the default Android email app is overwhelmingly the most used. It may be that many users aren’t enamored with it, but email plays a peripheral part in their lives. It’s not an app you spend more time on than you have to, and therefore a functional example is sufficient. All of C. Scott’s gripes with the app are perfectly valid, but he also explains how much of a power-user he is due to work requirements. If you don’t have to scan and process over 50 emails by the time you get out of bed, you’re less likely to be drawn to the relatively niche shortcomings that he highlighted.

This was the general mood of many people in the comment section of C. Scott’s article. As reader Nurul Bintoro put it, “Thank God I don’t need any of these features. I only use Gmail to send and read emails, and Gmail does it really well.”