Recently I’ve received an invite to Inbox, Google's new email interface that will likely replace Gmail in the future.
The new Inbox also comes as an App, and is currently invite only.

The service is a mix of things that have been introduced to Gmail recently.
Here are some highlights:

 

Inbox Zero is the goal

The new inbox lets you mark things as

• Pin - for important things, similar to Stars
• Snooze - clear them from your inbox until a date in the future (Tomorrow, Next Week, etc.), this is a very cool feature and helps users to actually address important email, so they won’t be forgotten in the abyss of low-priority.
• Done - similar to Archive

To me it seems that the Inbox is more like a To-Do list, where you make sure you don’t miss anything.

Design revamped for Tablets/Mobile

Even on the desktop, Inbox looks like a tablet app, this is of course part of the Material design concept coming with Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

Tabs are called Bundles

Bundles help you group your emails into groups (Purchases, Travel, Promos, etc.).
This is very similar to the feature that was introduced to Gmail not long ago called Tabs.

Labels are DEAD

Well, kind of, anyways.
Labels were introduced on Gmail, and were a revolutionary idea that basically added Tags to your emails instead of putting them into separate folders.
The new labels are much like folders now, you can’t give your email multiple labels, and if you want to set a label, you have to “Move” the email to that label (like with Google Drive):

Long live Labels, you will be missed!

Filters are a part of labels

I must say the filtering system on Gmail needed a makeover, it was rather complex and separated from anything else in your Inbox.
Filters are now within each Label (under the Label Settings)

And the label settings look like this:

As you can see, there’s an option to Skip the Inbox, this further illustrates that Inbox is very much like a task list, since you can have an email that is sitting there (even when it belongs to a label) until you mark it as “Done”.

Reminders

A nice little addition to Inbox is the Reminders, that you get to add to your Inbox (did I say To-Do list enough times yet?).
I like the idea, but this further confuses me as to which tool is meant to be used for To-Do when we have Calendar Tasks, Gmail Tasks, Google Keep & now Inbox Reminders.

The new design is beautiful, intuitive and definitely Mobile-centric.
All in all, it takes a bit of time to get used to it, but I enjoy having an empty Inbox.

I look forward to seeing the rest of my apps get such a revamp when my Nexus 5 finally gets the new Android 5.0 (Lollipop).

 

Until Next Week!