Mailbox half-heartedly delivers support for your Android tablet

Mailbox for Android isn't moving as quickly as we'd hoped. Photo: Mailbox

Mailbox for Android isn’t moving as quickly as we’d hoped. Photo: Mailbox

Mailbox, the popular email app from Dropbox, finally supports your tablet almost a year after it first came to Android. If you’ve used Mailbox on an iPad before, however, you’re going to be sorely disappointed with the user interface.

I’ve been a big fan of Mailbox since it made its debut on iOS back in February 2013, but I can’t help but feel it’s a little neglected on Android.

The app still supports Gmail and iCloud only — there’s no support for other services even though that’s been “coming soon” for 10 months — and while it’s nice to finally get tablet support on Android, it seems like a pretty half-hearted effort in comparison with the iPad version.

You see, Mailbox on an Android tablet doesn’t really have its own UI; it looks exactly the same as it does on your smartphone, only bigger. So if you were hoping for the split-screen view that iPad users get, you’re going to be just as disappointed as I am.

Mailbox on iPad (left) vs. Mailbox on a Nexus 9 (right, courtesy of AndroidPolice).

Mailbox on iPad (left) vs. Mailbox on a Nexus 9 (right, courtesy of AndroidPolice)

It’s certainly nice to see another Mailbox update via Google Play — which also adds support for Dropbox for Business accounts and notification badges on Samsung devices — but it would be nice to see the Android version of the app catching up to its iOS counterpart a little quicker.