Pocket Outlook is too basic. Is there an alternative e-mail client?

[WhiteBlazer01]

Wirelessly posted (HTC Touch Pro 2: Opera/9.80 (Windows Mobile; WCE; Opera Mobi/WMD-50430; U; en) Presto/2.4.13 Version/10.00)

So let me start with my complaints of pocket Outlook.

- it's been essentially the same forever. No major updates.
- can view HTML e-mails, but can't write them.
- can view embedded pictures, but can't embed them (have a pic in the e-mail body instead of as an attachment. iPhone does this automatically).
- can't bold/italicize/change color of text. (More specifically, a single word rather than the entire document).
- can't Send/Receive immediately. 5min is the fastest (besides Push).
- doesn't do a true fit to screen or word wrap in HTML e-mails. I have to scroll right a lot.
-can't save embedded images to the phone. (What if an iPhone user e-mailed me a pic to have? I can't save it.)
- and I'll say it again, it's never updated.


So, is there an awesome alternative e-mail client for our phones that's capable of all this?

[lawmangrant]

look towards flexmail........

It is pay....

but can do all of that and IMAP idle

[sanjsrik]

I did a review (unofficial) recently of the major players in this area:

Flexmail, NOT finger-friendly, does not scroll with the finger, dosen't seem very aware of WM6.5ishness

LonelyCatGames Profimail, not very easy to use, when you (for example) send a new email, you can't also within the same cycle get all your available emails. The program seems unable to cycle your unread and send your new mails in the same cycle.

Each of these clients has something lacking. PocketOutlook unfortunately, comes with the devices as standard. Even when you install one of the alternatives and set it up to be "default" I'm finding over and over again that this is a hit and miss proposition. For example, setting up anything else as your default SMS client may not invoke it to start when you receive a new SMS. It's very strange. it's almost as if there isn't a lot of effort going on in trying to create a viable PocketOutlook alternative:

nPop and Qmailer are both freeware, but unsupported and development seems to have stopped quite some time ago.

Anyone come up with any viable and decent alternatives, I'd be grateful to hear about them.

Oh, and Seven, just forget it. It didn't work 3 years ago when I tried it and didn't work about 3 weeks ago. It seems to be in perpetual beta.

[sanjsrik]

Originally Posted by WhiteBlazer01

Wirelessly posted (HTC Touch Pro 2: Opera/9.80 (Windows Mobile; WCE; Opera Mobi/WMD-50430; U; en) Presto/2.4.13 Version/10.00)

So let me start with my complaints of pocket Outlook.

- it's been essentially the same forever. No major updates.
- can view HTML e-mails, but can't write them.
- can view embedded pictures, but can't embed them (have a pic in the e-mail body instead of as an attachment. iPhone does this automatically).
- can't bold/italicize/change color of text. (More specifically, a single word rather than the entire document).
- can't Send/Receive immediately. 5min is the fastest (besides Push).
- doesn't do a true fit to screen or word wrap in HTML e-mails. I have to scroll right a lot.
-can't save embedded images to the phone. (What if an iPhone user e-mailed me a pic to have? I can't save it.)
- and I'll say it again, it's never updated.


So, is there an awesome alternative e-mail client for our phones that's capable of all this?

All of your points are valid and noted. Now, what do you see as a solution?

[sanjsrik]

Take a look at this link (it's a bit dated from 2008, but it's a pretty good overview):

http://www.pocketpccentral.net/software/mail.htm

[slimbrown29]

If only Resco would take Pocket Outlook and give it the "Resco" treatment. It would sell like hotcakes

[Lyman1]

Originally Posted by slimbrown29

If only Resco would take Pocket Outlook and give it the "Resco" treatment. It would sell like hotcakes

+1

I would purchase it immediately.

[sanjsrik]

Originally Posted by slimbrown29

If only Resco would take Pocket Outlook and give it the "Resco" treatment. It would sell like hotcakes

An observation:

Flexmail doesn't use the scrolling functionality built-in to WM6.5 because as the head of the company put it when I asked why this wasn't working:

"Yep, sorry. Finger scrolling should be automatic to all apps who use ListView controls and unfortunately it doesn't work in FM. Since there is no docs on how to make finger scrolling work, we asked Microsoft directly about this a year ago. They responded that they'd look at it and get back to us. They never did. We asked again, they told us that their engineers were too busy with WP7 and couldn't be bothered about an issue in 6.5.

Its not really MS's fault - I'd just like to know what we're doing that is causing finger scrolling not to work. Its their List control we're using in FM. They control all aspects of its scrolling. I know its something we're doing, but we've spent some time playing with it to figure out what enables it and what doesn't and we can't find any good reason for it not working."

I think a lot of vendors who want to get into the mail reader market aren't because MS makes it pretty darn difficult to get any interoperability in its core software. I could be wrong, but the dearth of any good viable alternatives pretty much leads me to believe that there must be something going on here.