I want better email integration on my mobile devices
I use my iPhone’s email functions daily. It’s more convenient than carrying my MacBook around, and it’s a lot quicker to pull up, too. But I’m the kind of guy who lives off of email. And compared to the Mail app on my Mac, iOS, Android, and other mobile operating systems’ versions of email clients just aren’t cutting it for me.
It has a lot to do with convenience, sure. But I wish I could have all of the features of my desktop client, condensed for a 3.5″ screen. The picture you see to the right doesn’t give enough information to me to be usable at a glance, and once you’ve tapped on the message you want, it still doesn’t open up a lot of options for you.
Should developers be doing something different with the way they’re coding their operating systems and mail clients? Or should manufacturers be making it easier for users to complete tasks with hardware functions instead of relying solely on touch? Let’s take a look at how these issues could be improved on in the future iterations of our favorite operating systems.
When most of today’s mobile mail clients were developed, the idea was to keep simplicity at a maximum, and push features off to the side. But as a daily user of these clients, I’ve found that they’re much too simplistic. Anybody can use them, so there is no harm in adding more power user features to them. What power user features? Well, I’d like to see faster selection of multiple items, and more things to do with those selected items. On my iPhone, I can archive or move them. I can’t delete them? I can’t merge the contacts from all the selected messages into one new message? These are some of the things that companies need to start thinking about.
I’d also really like support for multiple formats of emails. If I get an email from Zagg about its invisibleSHIELD line, and I’m out and about with my iPhone, I can’t read that email. I get a little bit of the message’s outline, and if I’m lucky, a link or two. But it’s very hard to get any work done, especially if your job relies on these formats of emails.
Back in 2007, when smartphones were really starting to take off, the simplistic approach to emails made a lot of sense. But now that the majority of people know how to use a smartphone, it makes more sense to be able to do more things with them. And we’ve yet to see any major improvements.
