Do More With Mail (Part 4) - Mailpro, SmartSender

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