As we all know, it’s been a couple of weeks now since we’ve seen the new Android 4.0.3 update hit devices like the Transformer Prime making it the first tab to receive the new firmware. Subsequently, after the update we saw a few nice features and improvements to multiple applications and the UI itself. However, it’s been discovered by the folks over at ComputerWorld that there’s a hidden little gem in the Gmail application. A new Gmail feature has been discovered labeled “experiments“. Sounds super duper secretive doesn’t it? The experiments feature is basically just a few useful options Google engineers added for the user to try out but may not be necessarily “stable” by any means. First up on the new experiments feature is “Enable Full Text Search” which is obvious right? The feature allows you to perform a complete search throughout your threads for key words while indexing them nicely for you.
The second feature was a little less obvious and dubbed “Enable Drag and Drop Contact Chip“. Yeah, we were thinking the same thing. What the? In any version pre 4.0, when you created a message the field in which you entered “To” or “Cc” and “Bcc” etc was just text. However, in ICS 4.0.3, those names are more than just text as they now associated the image from G Talk, Google + etc, hence the “Contact Chip”. Supposedly, with this feature you can just long press the chip and drag it to any field you’d like. Pretty cool. So ultimately, if you were in error and added a name to one field where you didn’t intend to add it, you could simply now just drag and drop the chip to another field without retyping or erasing anything. Let me see the iPhone do that! So, when will you see this roll-out to your device? How about whenever you’re ready to download the apk? Yep, our friends over at Android Police extracted the apk and decided to see what would happen when they ported it over to a Galaxy Nexus. Well, it worked liked butter. They’ve since then tried it on a few other devices as well and provided updates with their findings. We’ve pasted them below for convenience along with the apk file download. Check it out and don’t forget to let us know how it pans out. If you have any other discoveries while playing with the features, do tell in the comments below. Enjoy.
If at any time you’re experiencing any undesired behavior, don’t worry, you can always uninstall it and roll back to the previous stock Gmail application.
From Android Police:
Update #1: We just tried it out on Honeycomb (3.2) and it worked just fine.
Update #2: The apk <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion=”13″ android:targetSdkVersion=”14″ />, meaning Honeycomb 3.2 is an absolute minimum.
Update #3: Gmail runs on 3.2, but force closes upon opening emails, so we wouldn’t recommend installing it on 3.2 after all (go to Settings > Application > Gmail > Uninstall updates to revert if you’ve already installed it).
Download Link:
[via Android Police]