The ultimative iPhone eMail application: iMail Professional

iMail Professional - the ultimative mail application for my iPhone 3G!

Almost everybody owning one of these crazy genius Apple smartphones will agree: This gadget simply rocks and its new user interface concept is simply the beginning of a new era. But why on earth did Apple, the uber master of usability and "it just works damnit!" put one of the most crappy and feature-less mobile mail clients on their device and (the most surprising fact) still does not seem to be able to provide us with a decent mail application that actually can be really used by people who have more than one mail account or get more than 5 mails per day?

Now, that is the point where iMail Professional enters the scene. Well, it actually does not because at this point I am just dreaming and trying to collect a list of features that the perfect mail app for my iPhone needs to have and if anybody is reading this, please let me know what *you* think is missing...

iMail Professional Feature List:

Landscape Mode
This includes being able to write new mails and browse folders in landscape mode. Browsing folders can be implemented as a two-pane layout, that means you see the tree structure of folders on the left side and the list of mails for the currently selected folder on the right side.

I do not get it. What does prevent the developers at Apple to implement a Landscape mode for their mail (and SMS while we are at it) app? Honestly, I develop software myself and I would expect that anyone with a little bit of coding experience can implement this feature in a week or so.

Extensive Mail Search Capabilities
Being able to search through all or selected mail accounts and folders by specifying one or more header fields (and the search keywords) and/or the text I am looking for in the message body is a must-have for a professional mail application.

I have thousands of mails stored in my several IMAP accounts. And I receive quite a bunch of new ones each day. It is nice that I can mail my flight schedule to myself in order to have it with me when I am travelling, but this is not very useful when you need the information and have to scroll through piles of new (and in this particular situation not very interesting) messages.

IMAP Folder Management
Being able to create new and move/rename/delete folders would be helpful to organize mails on the go. I really would like to see this and IMHO this belongs in every professional mobile mail  application.

Customizable Folder Views and Direct Folder Search
Thunderbird has it (and others too) and I desperately need this on my iPhone as well. Defining filters for mail folder views including the sort field and sort order would be great and a search field which allows me to quickly filter the mails in the currently selected filter would be fantastic.

Fast Folder and Account Navigation
Lets face it: Moving back and forth between different mail accounts on our iPhone is a big deal. And the fact that the full folder structure is shown when you browse folders is a big waste of screen space. The ultimative iPhone mail client has a way to easily navigate to a different folder on a different account, for example by providing a button that brings up a search field where I can perform a search for a folder name. Or, a simple drop down list of all accounts which brings you to the top folder of that account with two "clicks" instead of having to navigate all your way back to the account list.

The ultimative gold standard for folder navigation would be a tree-like folder view where I can expand or collapse sub folders of a folder and the platin edition of folder navigation would allow me to define a list of favourite folders which I could access via a "jump to:" screen that pops up when I double tap on the name of the currently shown folder.

Combined Inbox
Having more than one account means having to check every single account for new messages, which would result in a lot of jumping around even with the fast folder navigation features of iMail Professional. The Blackberry has a combined inbox view which simply lists the new mails of all account inboxes - being able to select the accounts that should participate in this would be great, of course.

Release Date
If we believe Apple, this mail app will never be released - it "provides the same or similar functionality" as the mail app does. Yeah, right. Did you already jail break your iPhone? if you did, you will agree that the applications you can install using Cydia instead of AppStore definitely make it clear that this mobile phone has the potential to become a fantastic smartphone. Being able to use MMS, VoIP, Video Recording and landscape SMS is fantastic. You are amazed about what this great device can do and at the same time you are totally puzzled why this functionality was not provided by Apple or is actually not allowed to enter the famous AppStore. Heck, I would buy iMail Professional as soon as it is available, and I would happily pay 30 Bucks for it or even more. That investment is easily returned by saving time and nerves when using a mobile email application that is worth its name.

Comments

[Heiko]

I just found out that the guys over at MacWorld already posted a wishlist for the iPhone mail app in August, 2007! Seems that Apple did not manage to put a lot of these things into their mobile mail client since then, sad as it is.

http://iphone.macworld.com/2007/08/our_iphone_wish_list_mail.php

[VinnieNZ]

You can add the ability to be able to check for new mail in all folders, as opposed to just the Inbox, to your wishlist as well.

[berlin]

Gut!