The Bottom Line
iPhone Mail and iPad Mail do a great job rendering emails and attachments pretty, swift and useful.
Text snippets expand oft-used text, and rudimentary formatting lets you highlight passages. A few more shortcuts (such as full-text searching across folders, extensive email templates, a Reader feature borrowed from Safari or filters) would be great, though.
Text snippets expand oft-used text, and rudimentary formatting lets you highlight passages. A few more shortcuts (such as full-text searching across folders, extensive email templates, a Reader feature borrowed from Safari or filters) would be great, though.
Pros
- Mail on iPhone and iPad is a mature and powerful mobile email program
- You can view richly formatted messages and attachments the way they were intended
- iOS Mail handles multiple POP, IMAP and Exchange accounts, for some with live updates and search on the server's side
Cons
- iOS Mail does not sort messages by anything but date, and threading could be more comprehensive
- You cannot filter mail in iPhone Mail and iPad Mail or use message templates
- Files other than photos and videos are not easily attached and shared in iOS Mail
Description
- iOS Mail lets you access multiple POP, Exchange and IMAP email accounts on an iPhone or iPad.
- Messages with rich formatting and attachments (including images, Office documents and PDF files) are displayed as intended. Attached files can be opened in external apps.
- Integration with iPhone Contacts and Safari puts email addresses and linked web pages at your fingertips; integration with Calendar makes turns emails into events.
- Siri lets you find emails by voice and have them read to you as well as compose and send new messages or replies.
- You can find mail using From, To and Subject as well as body text search (on the server if possible).
- Bulk actions let you delete, move and flag multiple messages in one go as well as mark them read or unread.
- Inbox emails from VIP senders are collected in an automatic search folder for priority access and can be announced in a special manner.
- Pictures from iPhone Photos can be sent as attachments easily, and you can paste any rich-text content from the web as well as apply basic text formatting.
- iPhone Mail expands iPhone-wide text snippets and is available for third-party applications to create emails — using message templates, for example.
- New messages from iCloud, Yahoo! Mail and Exchange accounts can be pushed to iPhone Mail without manual checking.
- iOS Mail supports iPhone 3GS/4/4S/5, iPod touch 4/5 and iPad 2 as well as new iPad.
