I use gmail but you can get rid of the icons ("colored letters") in the settings.
+1 here. I use Gmail exclusively simply because it fits my needs and has done for years. Browsers are another matter, I can't find a single one that does everything I want so I currently use a combination of stock (old faithful, works well but lacks the features of others and is really quite dull). Chrome because it syncs my bookmarks across my devices and at the moment, Opera, because it is faster than both.
I was running Dolphin on my phone and tablet but it started to let me down, often not displaying web pages and getting a bit freaky with cutting and pasting text.
For the last week or two I have been using UC Browser HD on my tablet and it might just be the one, very, very fast and has cool features like two finger swipes for tab control (new tab, close tab, switch tab) and a persistent setting to view desktops sites rather than mobile versions that actually works (yeah Chrome, I'm talking to you!). It does lack any kind of bookmark sync and is prone to pop ups, but that is not really an issue for me. The main problem however is that the HD (tablet) version is not compatible with my phone, and the normal version is nothing like its big brother. One to keep an eye on I think.