Email/messaging Programs

[Guest sd1]

I just wanted to know if anyone knows any nice email/messaging app for wm6. i don't like using the outlook because it's just slow and not responsive. I want my emails to look as they do if I'm browsing the web...

[Guest necosino]

use Opera to browse to your email's HTTP exchange :D like hotmail.com ;)

[Guest Cooper3950]

There isn't a wide selection. Resco's is the best for now but there are developers working on something better at this link...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=520689

Follow that for a few weeks and maybe it will show fruit.

[Guest necosino]

There isn't a wide selection. Resco's is the best for now but there are developers working on something better at this link...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=520689

Follow that for a few weeks and maybe it will show fruit.

Oh now that looks nice.. Will be donating to that for sure :D

[Guest Rob V]

There isn't a wide selection. Resco's is the best for now...

As I understand it, OP was looking for a decent replacement for Pocket Outlook. Resco doesn't appear to offer anything like this other than Resco Contacts (which I already use and do like). Am I missing something?

About the only complete email replacement I'm aware of is FlexMail from WebIS. I've tried this, and it does have more functionality than tmail (Outlook). Unfortunately, I find it harder to use and less polished (if that's possible) than Outlook. It's also completely touch-unfriendly (again, even more so than Outlook).

I'm still amazed that no one has come up with something like FlexMail that's completely finger-friendly yet more functional than Outlook. Seems like there are custom WM apps for just about everything you could possible think of (and some you couldn't!) A decent email client with support for HTML and Exchange seems like something so basic and necessary, yet it doesn't seem like there is a single decent alternative to Outlook? I've been looking for years now, but with no success. :D

The project over at XDA looks promising, but the primary goal is to produce a replacement client for SMS/MMS messaging. I did ask, and they say that support for email messaging is part of the longer-term plan but definitely not a first priority.

So if anyone knows of something that would replace Outlook for Exchange email handling, PLEASE let me know about it!!

[Guest Doc007]

i agree we need an app that makes email browsing and searching more streamline and finger friendly. Similar to what Thumbcal does for the default WinMo calendar.

[Guest Piemole]

The guys who made thumbcal should have a crack at an sms/mail ap

[Guest sd1]

Yeah, I'm just looking for an email app. Most of the emails i receive have images and outlook just makes it look like crap. It's hard to scroll around unless i have a stylus or something. Half the time i just see code. I'm surprised that there are no apps (there's a vibrator app for pleasing women, lol)

[Guest Omniaaddicted]

maybe this one what u need..

http://community.seven.com/main.php

[Guest Rob V]

maybe this one what u need..

http://community.seven.com/main.php

Nope, unfortunately. I went through all the trouble to install it, only to UNinstall it ten minutes later. Turns out that SEVEN merely offers the web/middleware infrastructure, while relying on the same old Pocket Outlook to interact with your email (SEVEN merely shows up as another email account in the tree list). In fact, you get better mail reading functionality with native Outlook: SEVEN appears to have no support for HTML or side-scrolling, and has a max size limit of 50k/email. I'm not sure if it supports attachments at all, because I never got that far with it to find out.

Net: If you are connecting directly to an Exchange server, SEVEN offers absolutely zero incremental value that I can see (actually, it represents a step in the wrong direction). The only good thing is that it's available on a lot of different phone platforms, so it might make your Exchange mail accessible via some device that doesn't offer native support.

So we're back to seeking a decent email solution. Anyone else have a suggestion??

[Guest Rob V]

Yeah, I'm just looking for an email app. Most of the emails i receive have images and outlook just makes it look like crap. It's hard to scroll around unless i have a stylus or something. Half the time i just see code. I'm surprised that there are no apps (there's a vibrator app for pleasing women, lol)

Fortunately, it's easy to make your Omnia scroll perfectly with the very lightest touch of your finger. It's taken me a long time and a lot of trial-and-error, but it comes down to three easy steps. I just posted the whole process yesterday in another topic, so I'd urge you to read the post (it's post #5 on that page) and then see what you think. I can pretty well guarantee that if you do the three steps I outlined, you'll at least be able to cross "hard to scroll around" off your list of complaints. About the only time I need my stylus anymore is to play Freecell or Solitaire... :D

WRT viewing graphics and format-intensive emails, after fixing the scrolling per above (which makes ALL the difference), I don't find it a real problem anymore other than the time and hassle to hit the "turn on scrolling" and "download graphics" links at the top of the email items. In fairness, HTML emails are rendered very closely (not 'quickly', but at least 'closely') to what I see in regular Outlook on the PC. I do wish that MS had included a "whitelist" feature, however - so I could indicate that any future emails from this sender or domain should automatically have images downloaded. Likewise, I would desperately love a global option to set "turn on scrolling" as the default, rather than having to select it for each separate email.

The final discovery (at least it was for me!) was that a left or right swipe while reading an email will take you directly to the previous or next item. This alone has made a huge reduction in the time it takes me to scan through the hundreds of emails I receive each day. And because I've set up Exchange to filter them all into a number of subfolders, I can now quickly read all the items, followed by a "select all" and "delete" to clean out each subfolder in turn. (I move anything I find worth keeping to my Inbox.)

Anyway, hope this helps at least a little! ;)

[Guest Rob V]

I've been thinking a little about what would be needed to make Pocket Outlook usable to the point I wouldn't complain so much about it. FWIW, I don't think it really needs a total rewrite -- just a minor reskinning and a few other small changes could make a massive difference. Here's my list:

a ) In most WM 6.5 builds, the pop-up menus (the ones called up by the left & right softkeys) have been enlarged and are now quite finger-friendly. The problem is the ones at the top of the display (in Outlook, the "Show" and "Received" pulldowns) which are just as tiny as ever. I don't use the sort-order pulldown very often, but I use the "Show" menu constantly to select from the various Inbox sub-folders in my Exchange account. This is the biggest PITA I find with Outlook, because there is no way to open this menu other than by using a fingernail to click "Show" (use a fingertip, and I usually end up hitting the Start Menu right above it... grrr...) And even after managing to open the menu, trying to click the tiny "+" next to Inbox and then click on the desired folder is a real exercise in frustration. The only hope is to use a fingernail, which often ends up hitting the wrong choice, or to fall back and drag out the stylus again. In fact, the stupid 'Show' menu is the only part of Outlook remaining that is completely non-finger-friendly, so this would be by far my #1 priority.

Seems to me that there has to be some way to enlarge/re-skin these pulldown menus, just as has been done to the pop-up menus at the bottom. Does anyone know if this is possible, and how to do it? You'd be a hero in my book forever!

b ) When viewing content of an email, the left soft-key now changes from "Delete" to "Reply". To delete while reading the item thus requires hitting 'Menu' and then 'Delete'. I'd much prefer that the left soft-key always did a 'delete'. It's more consistent, and I do a whole lot more 'deletes' than I do 'reply'. ('Reply' is already available as a choice in the 'Menu' popup anyway.) Again, not a big change -- but one that would save a lot of wasted time wading through menus.

c ) As I mentioned before, we need a global option to set "turn scrolling on" as a default (if activated, the link in the email could just read "turn scrolling off" if needed for that particular item). With decent finger-scrolling, there just isn't much need for this anymore.

d ) We need a 'whitelist' option, much like the "junk mail" controls in the desktop versions of Outlook: I'd like to be able to add a particular sender's address or an entire domain to this list (invoked by click-and-hold while viewing a message). From then on, any new items from that sender or domain would automatically have graphics downloaded. Even better would be a global option to set "download graphics" as a default, where adding an address or domain to the list would cause graphics to not be auto-downloaded for that selection in the future.

There are tons of other features that would be nice to have, of course, but I think these four alone would transform Outlook from a PITA to a tool that's halfway pleasant to use. In fact, having just (a) and (b ) would be a great start -- and might be possible just through reskinning and perhaps use of a key remapping tool. Is anyone out there technical enough to make these two things happen??