Mailpro
Mailpro works around some of the limitations of accessing
Hotmail, MSN and Windows Live accounts through an email client rather than the
webmail view.
Apple’s Mail for iOS sets up Hotmail as an Exchange service,
and although it downloads new messages it couldn’t retrieve messages already in
our inbox at the point of setup in our tests. mailPro, on the other hand,
downloaded them ten at a time, refreshing with the next ten each time we
reached the bottom of the screen.
Import business Where Mail didn’t download any of our Hotmail archive, mailPro
recognised over 3000 existing messages
Viewing messages with attachments, such as embedded images,
caused the content to be blocked until we tapped to enable it, at which point
it exposed a web view of the message in the application interface, which isn’t
ideal.
However, it does have a number of neat features, including
the ability to set a PIN on the app so that only those who have the code can
access your mailbox, and a ‘photo message’ button that makes it easy to attach
an image from your photo library. Sadly, though, it’s literally sent as an
attachment, rather than as the background of the message, so ‘photo message’ is
perhaps overselling the feature a little.
If you have a large Hotmail archive you want to access on
your iPhone, this is a neat way to do it, but if all you’re interested in is
the messages that will come in from this point forward, we’d stick with the
Mail app.
|
Details
|
|
Price
|
$2
|
|
From
|
App Store bit.ly/JcGTfV
|
|
Rates
|
3/5
|
Gmail
There are two ways to access your Gmail inbox without the
adverts (three if you count ad blockers). One is to switch to the mobile view
using the regular iOS Safari; the other is to download this free app from
Google.
Why is it free? Because in truth it doesn’t offer much more
than the web view apart from the extra space you gain by disposing of the
address bar, Safari buttons, tabs and bookmark bar.
At heart, the app is a skinning of the website; the login
screen, for example, matches what you see when you point Safari for iOS at
gmail.com. The drop-downs, like the action menu for replying, moving or
reporting messages as spam, match the regular site’s menu styling, but the
mailbox sidebar is neatly implemented as a slide-out channel that you can hide
when not in use, in much the same way that Mail in OS XLion lets you hide your
mailboxes and use the shortcuts on the toolbar to switch between different mail
views.
Hidden depths, the
free Gmail app looks very similar to the web-based version, but gives over more
space to your messages and hides your folders until you need them
All of your existing labels are carried across as pseudo
mailboxes, and it respects Gmail’s Priority Inbox. Although it’s not displayed
in the same way as it is on the web, it does hive off your priority messages
into a separate folder called Important.
There is one respect in which it falls short of the regular
web version, though: it’s missing the links to Google Calendar, Contacts and
so on. If you use multiple Google services, that means you might well do better
to save a shortcut to gmail.com on your desktop. If you don’t, iPhone users
should check out Sparrow for a more fully fledged iOS -native alternative to
this free app, while iPad users would do better to stick with Mail.
“This free app from Google is at heart a skinning of the web
interface. Labels and priority messages are carried across”
|
Details
|
|
Price
|
Free
|
|
From
|
App Store bit.ly/JcHjTo
|
|
Pro
|
More screen space than browser * tidies away unneeded
folders
|
|
Con
|
Loses links to other Google tools * not many features over
browser
|
|
Rates
|
3/5
|
SmartSender
When you want to use a slack moment or two to catch up your
emails or texts, but not send them right away, SmartSender will stack them up
and dispatch them when you specify. It’s a simple, neat solution that’s
probably of most use in sending reminders to yourself to do something at a
later time. It works with both SMS and email, and you can pick contacts from
your address book.
It’s up to you by how much you want to delay your messages,
but the big catch is you have to ensure SmartSender is running in the foreground
at the time they need to leave your iPhone. Otherwise, the messages you’ve
stacked up for dispatch won’t be posted. The app’s creators warn that this will
affect your iPhone’s battery life. It doesn’t matter if the device is sleeping,
but if you’ve pushed SmartSender to the back by using another app you’ll just
see a notification when the next send time is reached, prompting you to take
manual action.
Frontand center Apple’s restrictions on third- party apps mean SmartSender can
only send scheduled messages if it’s running at the time
A free version only lets you schedule emails or texts to be
sent in the next 20 minutes, which is a good way of seeing if the app is right
for you before you shell out.
|
Details
|
|
Price
|
$2
|
|
From
|
App Store bit.ly/JXQTIW
|
|
Rates
|
3/5
|
