Which is the best mobile email client – device and/or app?
By Ben Robinson on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 4:00 PM PST In Apple, BlackBerry, Messaging, RIM (Research in Motion)
I’ve had the (dis)pleasure of testing many, many email clients, on many, many devices, over the last 5 or so years. Even since those days when the first, immature, clients appeared, right up to the present, I do feel like I’ve yet to see one that works consistently, seamlessly, and, flawlessly i.e. is perfect!
Now I include in that statement all the native email clients that I have used on mobile devices that have proprietary operating systems, WinMo, Series60, Linux, RIM O/S, and also Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s OSX.
Until (very) recently, I thought Apple’s email client on the iPhone was going to be the best thing ever – since it purported to do push email, full HTML rendering of the message, multiple accounts, great typing recognition – and on some of these counts (namely the typing and HTML rendering) it is truly superb. But on others (reliability, consistency), it unfortunately fails big-time.
Of course, Blackberry is said to be the ‘be all and end all’ of mobile email, and I would agree, to some extent that is true – they own push mail completely (nobody does it better right now), and their keyboard works well for typing. But their Achilles up to now has been the email rendering, which has always been plain text.
That was of course until the BlackBerry Bold, which apparently has a “rich text optimiser” sat in the latest BlackBerry server, that feeds the device – the idea I think being that emails are presented in the best way for the device. But my experience of transcoders is that they aren’t perfect – and that can frustrate users. Whether the new Storm has even better functionality, I don’t know…
So that really leaves us in a bit of a quandary, as no native email client on-device seems to support all the features needed by today’s power user of emai. So what about 3rd party applications that can be installed on devices? Well I have a natural aversion to anything that needs to be installed usually, since most often it can’t provide the same integration that a native application can – but I’m ready to be convinced otherwise….
…. So here’s the question – what do you think is the best email client, on any mobile platform? It can be an app or native, and can be on any device – I would LOVE to know what you think on this one!!! Go go go readers, drop some comments on me!
Ben
I have use the Bold and it have greate e-mail client but the sad is the rest
in the Bold is nothing to be glad of for me The Nokia’s Mail for Exchange
program work real good and the fact it haves so more
The E71 wins points for a remarkably trim profile (10mm vs. 12.3mm), decent 3.2-megapixel camera (instead of 2.0)
Setting up Nokia’s Mail for Exchange program required no IT help or time. QuickOffice let us create, edit and send Word/Excel/PowerPoint files on the fly while we browsed PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The E71 is stocked with enough apps and goodies to keep even the most overworked road warrior on the ball, but it didn’t feel too “business.” That’s mostly due to the fact that the E71 has two separate customizable home screens. One is designed to house all of your work apps like Excel and PowerPoint while the other is geared more towards entertainment with programs for audio, video and gaming. Switching between the two is dead simple, a dedicated button at the top of the menu lets you toggle between the two screens instantly.
Can the last poster please learn to how to string a thought together? His gramatical ability is worse than a 5th grader’s. Having said that, the BlackBerry Bold is definitely superior in every way to other phones currently in the market. I work at one of thoes mall kiosks, and I play with every manufacturer’s phone all day long. Bold beats iPhone and I’ll tell you why- Bold is significantly more functional in an every-day setting (and that includes personal use). iPhone is all icing- no cake. Albeit the icing is damn good (but it still gives you more caveties).
BlackBerry Storm. Wow- we played with it at the developer’s conferance. Wow. We are all still in awe over that experience of touching it, feeling it, and generally enjoying having our hands all over it. That is until Jeff touched it, then it got all sticky.
I own a E71. I don’t have an exchange server, so Mail for Exchange isn’t a topic.
Since one week I’m using the free beta version of Lonelycatgames’ ProfiMail. It’s available for Symbian OS based devices and Pocket PCs. I really love it! Very good IMAP support, fast and the possibility to display HTML emails without reformatting is great! You can even control the resize ratio for images in HTML mails. So you can adjust the size of the images regarding the size of your display…great!
A file manager comes also with it…for free!
By far the best email client is/was ChatterEmail for the PalmOS platform.
In its heyday, ChatterEmail supported IMAP Push, Exchange, POP with a HUGE number of features. The best part was pre-Palm acquisition ChatterEmail enjoyed the best developer support (tech support issues, bug fixes, and new features were turned around at incredible speed).
Second the E71 with Mail for Exchange. It’s a tasty-thin platform, and a great email client. Hardware keys stomp touchscreen keyboards.
I have an iphone with a mobileME account and I have to say its flawless, it does everything it says it will. The mail is fast typically 2-5 seconds from hitting the server to my phone (sad that I test it i know!!) the calender is great too, updates really fast. My boss has a Blackberry and says he doesn’t get any issues, that’s on o2 in UK like my iphone. I have a googlemail account and its forwarded to my MobileME, I keep this active as a backup!
Hey, Did you guys see the two girls fighting outside of the developer’s conference? No joke- I’m serious! They were pulling each other’s hair and one girl tore her shirt. They were fighting over this guy- and he was just standing there laughing!
I own the E71. I enjoy it because it has two separate customizable home screens. One is designed to house all of your work apps like but the other is for audio, video and gaming.
I downloaded some free software from a wap site. Now these apps are frozen in games or apps folders on my phone. Cannot delete or launch. And their icons have doubled in my phone folders. Any advice, help, or guidance is appreciated! Thanks, Wil: using Java phone, SonyEric.
W580i, Tx.
# Marcy# Hey, Did you guys see the two girls fighting outside of the developer’s conference? No joke- I’m serious! They were pulling each other’s hair and one girl tore her shirt. They were fighting over this guy- and he was just standing there laughing!
#
What guy ? lol
Yeah..
I too have Nokia Email Client. I have Mail4Exchange too. But it doesn’t support all Email accounts and also its bit complicated. I feel Gmail is really advanced than all those email clients I have used so far. Because it uses very minimum kilobytes (KB). But other clients use maximum and also it used to hang sometimes. I wish Nokia and others too develope a client like Gmail.
- Jin
This site is very difficult to navigate with my Moto Q.
You can probe the mobile mail client mailwithme. Download it from http://www.mailwithme.com/. This mobile mail client runs on very small devices.