Let’s face it – Email on Android is a pain. If you only have Gmail accounts, you can get by with the native Gmail app. If you have any other email service, you’re stuck with rather aesthetically dated apps. iOS users, on the other hand, enjoy visually impeccable and functionally superlative options such as Mailbox, Dispatch and Triage. Evomail, the once iOS-only email client, has just landed on Android, and it hopes to change all that with its beautiful design and support for several major email services.
I'll say this in the beginning of the review itself – if you love Mailbox or envy those who use it, and wished it was on Android, Evomail is the answer to your prayers. The swiping mechanism that Mailbox made cool is present and accounted for. Snooze functionality is available too, with the app giving you an option to be reminded of an email after 4 hours, till the next day at 8 AM or till the next Monday at 8 AM. If you want to specify a time and date for the email to be snoozed till, you can do that as well. Inbox Zero practitioners, rejoice!
The app has a very clean and polished look, closely resembling the well designed iOS app. Setting up your Gmail and Yahoo Mail accounts is a two step process, while the other supported services require you to enter the usual server information (more on this later). It also has useful tutorials that display as an overlay, so you can familiarise yourself with the actions on offer in the app. Anyone who has used the iOS version will feel right at home, while someone using it for the first time will catch on quickly. If you're not clear about a function, even after going through the tutorial, there is a Reset Tutorial option in the app settings.
I really enjoyed the UI. Tapping, swiping and scrolling are silky smooth (results may vary, of course, but from what I can tell, that will be more to do with hardware than software). I also like the look of the threaded conversations view, with the design similar to the revamped official Twitter App conversation view. The editor itself is very clean, with a tiny paperclip icon at the bottom, which allows you to attach a new photo directly by redirecting you to the Camera app, or any other file through the usual apps – Gallery, File Explorer, etc. The developer's use of colours, such as when swiping and using the Quick Action Bar, is also very well done. Tapping the hamburger icon in the app brings a two-tabbed view : one for your folders and labels, and one for Accounts. Interestingly, the app makes the menu key on your phone (if you have it) completely redundant. I haven't found a single section of the app that brings up a context menu when you tap the Menu Key. I also really appreciate that the developers included an option for 'Send and Archive', thus eliminating an unnecessary step in your workflow.
However, there are some areas for improvement. For one thing, there is no unified Inbox. For an app that seeks to replace all others, this is a glaring omission. The developers have brought this to their iOS app, however, so I’m sure this will make it to Android soon enough. Search is a bit iffy as well, with results taking too long to display and no cloud search. Also, while the app supports Gmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail, AOL Mail, GMX, Fastmail, Yandex and IMAP, when you set up a new account, only three options are visible – Gmail, Yahoo and Generic IMAP. I'm not sure if this is a design choice or if it was enforced, but it does make it look like only Gmail and Yahoo are natively supported. After all, not everyone remembers server settings, so this could make adding accounts a bit off-putting for novice users. Aliases on Gmail aren’t supported, either. If you want to access Exchange or POP3 email services, you’re out of luck for now – the developers do promise that they are on the way, however. I also noticed some small bugs in conversation threads, with some emails not showing up. Refresh is also a tad slow, as are the push notifications. Finally, a consequence of eliminating the Menu Key functionality is that the Settings menu is kept out of the way in the Accounts tab, necessitating multiple taps to access it.
Visually, Evomail for Android manages to borrow some of the best aspects of the native Gmail app on Android and Mailbox on iOS, while delivering them all in a remarkably well designed package. Functionally, there are some areas that need to be addressed. Remember, however, that this is a brand new app (at v1.0.2), so some bugs and teething issues are to be expected. The developers promise weekly updates on the Play Store, so the app is being actively developed and improved. Once Exchange and POP3 Mail accounts are added (and potentially aliases on Gmail as well) and some of the more glaring bugs are squished, Evomail will become the only mail client you will need on Android. Evomail is available for free from the Google Play Store.