Gmail Becomes the First Android App to Hit 1 Billion Downloads

The Gmail for Android app has reached a massive 1 billion download milestone on Google Play last week, the first app to have done so.

To be specific however, the 1 billion downloads figure displayed on Google Play for the Android app of Gmail, one of the most widely-used email services, is actually a tally of total unique accounts or installs, and not the total number of devices or users that downloaded the app.

It has been additionally noted that the 1 billion unique accounts include inactive or duplicate accounts. In 2012, it was noted that Gmail had 425 million active monthly users, which by now must have increased dramatically with the ever-growing popularity of Android, reports Android Police. As per AppBrain website, Gmail reached the half-way mark (500,000,000+ downloads) back in June 2013.

Gmail will celebrate its 2-year anniversary of becoming the most widely-used email service next month, and might take the opportunity to roll-out the much-anticipated radical design as seen in previous rumours and leaks.

On Monday, we saw a glimpse of what might soon arrive in the new UI design of Gmail in the form of some leaked screenshots. One look at the screenshots and it becomes evident that the search-engine giant is trying to unify the design philosophy of Gmail on mobile and web. If the leaked screenshots indicates the design direction Google is trying to take, it seems to be aiming to make the design less cluttered.

In the redesign, Google seems to be concentrating on scaling to various screen sizes and resolutions without losing functionality. We noticed that the sidebar is now replaced by a slide-in pane. The compose button is now moved to the bottom right corner, and it now has a new feature down there: reminders. A new pin system replaces starred emails and can be used to pin important emails to the top. In addition, Travel, Purchases, and Finance tabs are now available along with the already existing Social, Promotional, Updates, and Forums tabs. The redesign now looks very similar to Google Now on Android.