Back in August, Google launched Priority Inbox, a feature that automatically flags messages that Gmail believes you&'ll be most interested in. It&'s a great feature �a4���a4� Google says it cuts down the amount of time users spend reading email by 15% �a4���a4� but until now it hasn&'t really been available on Android, which features an otherwise great Gmail app. Today, that changes, as Google brings Priority Inbox to Android.

If you&'ve used Priority Inbox on the web, this will be pretty familiar. Messages in your inbox that Gmail thinks are important are tagged with arrows in the normal &8216'inbox&' view. And if you want to only look at the important messages, you can jump to the &8216'Priority Inbox&' label (you can also set this to your default).

Some other new features: you can now tell Gmail to notify you (via a vibration or sound) whenever you receive messages in your Priority Inbox' but spam and less important messages won&'t activate the alert. Google has also made it easier to select options like &8216'reply all&'.

You&'ll notice that Gmail for Android is getting more frequent updates now �a4���a4�a4s��it was only a few months ago that it got its last update. Prior to that, the app had been tied directly with Android&'s operating system, which was a problem because many users don&'t get the latest version of the OS for many months after they&'re released (if ever).

Of course, even with the decoupling of the app and the OS this update requires Android 2.2, which only 43.4% of Android phones are currently running, so not everyone will be able to use it. But it&'s still better than only giving the Gmail upgrade to users on Gingerbread, which is only supported by the Nexus S at this point. CrunchBase InformationGoogleGmailInformation provided by CrunchBase