Google today released a brand new update to their much hated Gmail app on iOS. By hated, I mean a lot of people disliked it because it did so many things wrong and definitely did not warrant using it over the standard mail app on the iOS. Well, now the app is at version 2.0 and what a difference the new app makes. The entire app feels like it’s been redesigned from the ground up to be faster, better looking, and here’s the biggest feature for me – it now allows for multiple account management.

I’ll start with the obvious changes. The Gmail app now looks really good. It has a much cleaner, modern look to it. It also feels a lot zippier and responsive where as the last app was slow and laggy. Emails load quickly and scrolling through your mail is really quick now. Another area that was a problem were the notifications. It just wasn’t very good and would often times not notify you at all. Well, the new app now notifies you immediately after receiving new mail. Not only that, it now works with iOS’s notification center, has badge icons, shows up on the lock screen, and it has its own distinct notification sound. Now the biggest feature addition for me however is the inclusion now of multiple accounts management. That means I can now link all my different Gmail accounts with this new app. This was one of my main complaints before about the previous app and am so glad now that the new update addresses this.

Now many may say, why use this if you can already manage multiple accounts using the standard mail app? Well, for starters, the Gmail app allows you to do pretty much everything you’d be able to do through Gmail on the web that you aren’t able to do with the standard mail app. You can label your emails, move emails to specific folders, mark emails as read quickly, and do this all for multiple emails at once. If you have other pop accounts associated to a specific Gmail address, the app will also allow you to email as that address or the standard Gmail address. On top of that, you can also use your Google Apps account email with the app.

Seriously though, the new Gmail app is a huge improvement. I haven’t even touched on all the new features yet but if you are a huge Google user that makes use of Gmail, Google Calendar, and G+, you’ll want to download and/or upgrade immediately to this update.

Gmail is available now in the App Store for free. It is a universal app and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.