Mobile email

time

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Email is supposed to be a key application for mobile devices, so it's surprising how immature the current Android offerings are.

The original bundled client has to be one of the worst apps that Google has produced. I persevered with it for 18 months because I only really used it to read emails, and then only when away from the office of course. But it can't be used to look at sent mail, check the junk folder or safely delete a message on something like Gmail. That's because you can't specify these key folders and there is no universal naming convention for IMAP. For instance, the Sent box might be called "Sent", "Sent Items" or "Sent Mail". It also can't handle these folders nested under Inbox, as most IMAP servers like to do, because the IMAP root path feature doesn't work properly, at least on the Android versions I've tried.

K9 is a big step up, it's free and very popular. But it has some clunky usability problems, such as switching to your Sent (or any other) folder: Menu button, scroll down to 'Folder List' and select it, then scroll down to 'Sent'. Even the original Android client is much better than that. On the plus side, it gives you a 2-line preview of each message.

MailDroid has a cleaner interface and introduces conversation view, but lacks previews. Unfortunately, I found that it just ignored parts of conversations and was noticeably slower than K9.

Kaiten (K10 geddit?) is an improved version of K9 that costs $5. Frankly, it's worth it; usability is much improved and you also score a full preview pane (if your screen is big enough), but no conversation view.

And that appears to be about it - or has someone here found a jewel hiding in the haystack that is Android Market?
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
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The standard Android client can look at Sent Items and other folder on IMAP servers just fine. The Gmail-specific client has a nicer presentation, but that's to be expected. I do get frustrated with mobile Gmail, but my issue is that I have damned many different identities that it's easier for me to just use the web version... which then doesn't expose all of its features to mobile clients.

I've found the two default clients to be acceptable; I've used K9, but that was primarily to segregate another email address.

What device(s) are you dealing with?
 

time

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And where do you think Sent messages end up?

You need to be able to control exactly what folders are used - otherwise the client will just create whatever it feels like, which will then show up as unwanted additional folders when you look through a different client or a web interface.

I've only just become aware of the extent of this problem while testing how well different email clients on different platforms actually unify. In short, they suck.

Then there's the special requirements for Gmail (which as near as I can tell, Apple has nailed), which is a whole other topic.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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And where do you think Sent messages end up?

Using Thunderbird and various mobile clients and interfacing with Gmail or other IMAP server, here's what happens:

Items sent are delivered to the "Sent" folder for the relevant account on each IMAP server (i.e. Inbox > Sent). If the message was sent via Gmail SMTP, the message also goes in the Inbox> Gmail > "Sent Items" folder for the account that was used to send.

The only bit where there can be an issue for me is that I sometimes send email as a different identity via Gmail's web interface, and those messages don't get returned to the proper Sent items folder on the mail account for that identity... but that's only because I have so damned many different email accounts in the first place.

I'm just not sure I see a problem.
 

MaxBurn

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And where do you think Sent messages end up?

That really annoys me, I don't know why mail apps want to hold on to your sent stuff. I always have to go in and make them save sent and drafts to the server. That way it makes it more consistent across multiple devices. But really I haven't had a problem convincing any mail program to do it that way, it's just not the default.

Edit: mine isn't an identity issue, it's just that default settings are to keep sent and drafts on that device for whatever reason.
 

Will Rickards

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For gmail there is the stock gmail app, for exchange there is touchdown.
For other e-mail I agree the apps kind of suck.
I tried K9 (for exchange) and gave up because I couldn't get it working.
From what I remember the UI was non-intuitive.
 

time

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Using Thunderbird ...

I'm trying not to bring Thunderbird into this, because it keeps a bunch of internal aliases for mail boxes and tries its very best to accommodate the variations.

Items sent are delivered to the "Sent" folder for the relevant account on each IMAP server (i.e. Inbox > Sent).

"Sent" is NOT the relevant account on all IMAP servers.

If the message was sent via Gmail SMTP, the message also goes in the Inbox> Gmail > "Sent Items" folder for the account that was used to send.

Wrong again. Gmail (and Google Apps) now uses "Sent Mail", not "Sent Items". Google has changed it at some stage and the info on the web is out of date.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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I'm still trying to figure out what your issue is.
You have users hitting IMAP servers with several different client programs and they aren't behaving in anything like a uniform fashion?

On a desktop client you should at least be able to create rules or filters to move mail where you think it should be. Gmail can have labels (folders) applied automatically regardless of what external clients do if mail is passing through it. I suppose that's a management headache but I also suspect this is something that's more of a problem for a few squeaky wheels than everyone you're supporting.
 

time

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Perhaps my email experience is more diverse? My accounts are spread across 3 IMAP providers and they all use different names for the 'core' folders:

Inbox - a given, always exists.
Drafts - pretty standard.
Sent - could be 'Sent', 'Sent Items' or 'Sent Mail'.
Junk - could be 'Junk', 'Junk Mail', 'Junk E-Mail' or 'Spam'.
Trash - could be 'Trash', 'Deleted', 'Deleted Items' or 'Bin'.

Most IMAP clients can be configured to map their local core folders to the corresponding folders on the actual IMAP server. However, out of the box, they may be cockeyed. In the case of the default Android client (eg. 'Sent'), as well as earlier Blackberries (eg. 'Sent Items'), the mapping is fixed, so you're out of luck anyway.

The consequences are multiple folders for the same function. For example, you may notice both a 'Sent' and a 'Sent Items'. The desktop client might correctly identify the folder but the mobile client decides to do its own thing and create its own.

Things get ugly when we move on to Junk and Deleted folders. Moving stuff in or out of a server's designated spam folder directly influences future filtering - you really want to get this right. And you do want to be able to fish around in the spam bucket when it decides to black-hole that important email that someone sent you.

Deleted folders are also special. Anything within here is on death row; once deleted again it's gone for good. But only if you're looking at the right folder!

A couple of days ago, I got fed up with a bogus Deleted folder that appeared under a phantom INBOX folder. It looked a bit like this:

  • Inbox (4000 emails)
  • Trash
  • INBOX
    • Deleted

I tried to delete the phantom INBOX but was blocked. Trying to be clever, I renamed it to INBO. The server immediately recreated the INBOX folder, as well as moving nearly 4,000 emails from Inbox into INBO! So it looked like this:

  • Inbox
  • Trash
  • INBO (4000 emails)
  • INBOX
    • Deleted

So 3 inboxes later, the lesson is: don't mess with abstract folders. ;)

The ultimate point of all this is that you really don't want users getting tangled up in this crap. When you try to unify web mail, desktop and mobile clients, you want them all on the same page.

Incidentally, newer clients such as Thunderbird 9, Opera Mail (tested it out of curiosity), Android Kaiten and iOS 5 all map Gmail correctly out of the box.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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Are any of these servers under your direct control? Looking at the configuration file for, say, Dovecot imapd, I'm pretty sure there's settings there to magic away those differences.
 

Howell

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The lack of standardization can be understandably annoying but the critical FML is the inability to change it at the client. The fact that some clients get some well known server configurations right out of the box doesn't help users of more obscure installations.
 

LunarMist

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Is there any way to get my outgoing smartphone e-mails back to my computer? When I reply to somebody from the phone I resort to cc-ing myself, but that is not really right since the sent field is not the recipient.
 

MaxBurn

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You've got to make the phone store sent stuff on the server in the right box for your particular account, discussion above on if that is sent, sent items, sent mail etc. Pain to figure out but it can be done.
 

LunarMist

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Thanks. I did not match up that problem and it seems not worth expending substantial effort for numerous e-mail accounts and several ISPs.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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The most convenient thing to do is configure a central Gmail account, authorize that account to send email as your other identities and use those Google credentials when sending e-mail. Everything will wind up in your Sent Items and it's reasonably straightforward to configure a label or folder for each identity and auto-sort.

Of course, that might not be so great if you have portions of your life you don't want passing through Google's servers, but it does centralize things nicely.
 

ddrueding

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I just keep my two Google apps for domain accounts (personal and work) open simultaneously in two tabs in Firefox. This seems the simplest way to use both and keep them separate?
 

LunarMist

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The most convenient thing to do is configure a central Gmail account, authorize that account to send email as your other identities and use those Google credentials when sending e-mail. Everything will wind up in your Sent Items and it's reasonably straightforward to configure a label or folder for each identity and auto-sort.

Of course, that might not be so great if you have portions of your life you don't want passing through Google's servers, but it does centralize things nicely.

Yeah, the latter bother me. But I really have no interest in learning anything complicated now. With all the apps today and supposed technology, there should be a damned checkbox for keeping the outgoing e-mail on the server. The whole point is to have a permanent record of all e-mails available on my computers when offline.
 

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Fatwah on Western Digital
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Here's a hilarious thing I just found out:
k9 is a wonderful and feature-rich Android mail client. It's one of the very few clients that supports push messaging from Gmail and that doesn't use that retarded threaded mail view, which no right-thinking human being wants in the first place.

However, k9's search function is only exposed on devices that have a physical search button. There's no way to access search from its on-screen UI.
And I'm not aware of any Android devices made in the last 18 months or so with a physical search button.
 

MaxBurn

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Try holding down the menu key.

Worked for me. Interesting as everywhere else that activates google now. Guess they know they have to handle things differently for different devices.
 

timwhit

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Worked for me. Interesting as everywhere else that activates google now. Guess they know they have to handle things differently for different devices.

I have found several apps that this works in. I wish devices would just have a search button though.
 

MaxBurn

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Huh, google is killing activesync for new signups starting next year, missed that last week. CalDAV, CardDAV and IMAP only now but you keep activesync if you are using it so go add it to something if you think you want it.

Got tired of paying for it and decided to trip microsoft up in the process? Apparently RT is screwed at the moment.
 
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