Mailbox for iPhone coming next year with a fresh take on email, to-do-like management

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/54553882 w=700&h=520]

Mailbox, announced today, is an application launching next year that brings a fresh email experience to iPhone users. It is a completely new approach to email management that allows you to reach “inbox zero” more quickly. It is built with the concept of to-do-list management, allowing you to simply mark emails as tasks to get done at your time of choosing. Mailbox’s promotional video above provides a look at the app.

The Verge posted a comprehensive look at the application, noting the ease-of-use and speed with its swipe-heavy user-interface controls:

Whereas most Mail apps rely on buttons to archive, delete, and file emails for later, Mailbox relies on a simple and colorful set of swipes. “Email was designed 30 years ago for computers chained to desks,” Underwood says. “Everything about it is slow and clunky. If you want to make it fast and mobile-friendly, the entire experience needs to be modernized.” Swiping a message to the right archives it (symbolized by a checkmark), while swiping a message to the left saves it for later (a yellow clock symbol). Swiping a message to the right and holding deletes it (symbolized by a red x), and swiping a message to the left and holding opens a List screen where you can move / label messages. In grand total, there are four ways to act on a message in your inbox, which means there’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s worth it.

Ellis Hamburger, the author of the review, calls it his “new favorite email app for iPhone.” It appears, unfortunately for some, that Mailbox works exclusively with Gmail. TechCrunch, which also posted a review of the application, says that Mailbox solves fundamental issues with email that some experience:

Every now and then, I get my hands on an application or a piece of technology that I can’t wait to tell the rest of the world about. Something that is a joy to use, tackles a major problem in a totally intuitive way, and makes otherwise difficult tasks unfathomably easy. Something that has the potential to fundamentally change the way we do things. Mailbox, which was created by the makers of task-management application Orchestra, is one of those apps.

The application is currently in beta, and the developers do not specify a launch other than coming “in the New Year.”