As rumored, Google has just released the highly anticipated native Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Even though the Gmail web app is one of the best web apps, we’ve been waiting for Google to launch a native Gmail app ever since the iPhone was launched.

Update:

Google has pulled the Gmail app from the App Store.

Google announced the launch of the app on their blog:

We’ve combined your favorite features from the Gmail mobile web app and iOS into one app so you can be more productive on the go. It’s designed to be fast, efficient and take full advantage of the touchscreen and notification capabilities of your device. And it’s one more reason to switch to Gmail.

The native Gmail app includes the following major features:

Speed

We want to give you the information you need quickly, with minimal effort and distraction. So we’ve included some time-saving features:

• Get alerted to new messages with push notifications and sounds
• Find an email in seconds with search across your entire inbox
• Autocomplete email addresses from your Gmail contacts or select from your device’s address book
• Upload photos with a click using the new attachment button in compose view
• On iPad, navigate your inbox and read your mail simultaneously with split view

Efficiency

Our inboxes overflow with dozens and even hundreds of messages a day—and this can be even more challenging on a smaller screen. The new Gmail app helps organize your mail so you don’t have to go wading through your inbox to find that key message from your boss or loved one:

• Focus on your important messages first with Priority Inbox
• Quickly scan countless emails on the same subject with threaded conversations
• Organize your mail by archiving, labelling, starring, deleting and reporting spam

Touch

We’ve also optimized the interface so you can perform common actions in Gmail with the lightest touch:

• Pull down your inbox to rapidly refresh if you’re eager for new mail
• Swipe right to view your labels without ever leaving your inbox
• Swiftly scroll through dozens of emails just by sliding your finger

You can download the Gmail app from the App Store using this iTunes link. As always, let us know what you think about the native Gmail app in the comments below.

Update 1:

The excitement was short lived. Here are some of the issues and limitations of the app:

• Push notifications are not working. When you launch the app, you get a Notification error – no valid ‘aps-environment’ for entitlement string found for application. Wasn’t push notifications the main reason to launch the native app?
• The app doesn’t support multiple accounts, which is quite a big limitation.

Update 2: 

Don’t bother searching for the app in the App Store, just use this App Store link to download it.

Update 3:

Some of our readers are reporting that the App Store link is not working. We’re not sure if Google has pulled the app due to the issues we had reported earlier or it hasn’t been rolled out in their respective countries. So do let us know which country you are trying to download the app.

Update 4: 

Google has pulled the Gmail app from the App Store. The App Store link doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Update 5:

Google has acknowledged the issue on their blog:

Earlier today we launched a new Gmail app for iOS. Unfortunately, it contained a bug which broke notifications and caused users to see an error message when first opening the app. We’ve removed the app while we correct the problem, and we’re working to bring you a new version soon. Everyone who’s already installed the app can continue to use it.

Update 6:

In case you’re interested, Paul Haddad – developer of of Tapbots and Tweetbot has explained the reason for the Notification error that has forced Google to pull the Gmail app from the App Store (via TiPb):

In the iOS Provisioning Portal you need to various different certificates. For all apps you’ll normally generate a Development, AdHoc distribution and Store distribution certificates. For push enabled apps you also need to generate Development and Production Push certificates.

What I think happens is that most people start by generating and downloading the 3 standard certificates and at some later point generate the Push certificates. However when you create the Push certificates it modifies the standard certificates in some way that tells the OS that it can be used for push notifications. You’ll often re-generate/download the Development and AdHoc certificates as you add new devices for testing, but you only have to re-genrate the Store certificates once a year when renewing with Apple.

So again what Google probably did is create the standard certificates, then create the Push certificates and didn’t re-generate/download the Store certificate. It’s a really easy mistake to make and there’s no indication of a problem anywhere within the submission process to Apple. It’s also a pretty trivial thing to fix and I’d expect Google to re-submit and Apple to expedite the release pretty quickly.

It does make me wonder why Apple didn’t catch this issue, my guess is something about the way they run apps prevents this error from showing up.

As far as I know the only way to see if this is a problem or not is to run the following command

codesign -dvvvv –entitlements – .app

and look for the following two lines in the output

aps-environment production

[via Gmail blog]