Email on Android Absolutely Sucks, Here's Why

Email on Android Absolutely Sucks, Here’s Why

I am obssesed with email, and love the way iOS handles emails. Having recently switched to Android, the whole process is simply so complicated, and there isn’t any universal App that can handle emails from different accounts.

There are many pros and cons or Android as a platform, but email on Android is definitely horrible. Firstly, Google ships a Gmail App with Android, and an Email App for managing email accounts. Now the Gmail App is impressive, and auto sync works perfectly. It also has got labels, priority inbox, and more, but the native email App is just so buggy.
gmail android
The email App has got a dark layout with white text, and it just looks yuck. There is no way of customizing it. Auto sync never works with the App even after customizing a lot of settings and tweaking a lot of things. The Email App is usually used for personal hosted accounts. Next, for Yahoo, you’ve got to use the Yahoo Mail App which can be downloaded from the Android Market. The Yahoo App is pretty neat, and functions as advertised. Nothing wrong with that.

Frustrated with the email experience, I checked out alternatives from the App Store. With the help of the ratings, MailDroid Pro and K9 seemed to be the only good ones. Let’s talk about K9. Although I love the idea that K9 is a community based project, it just isn’t there yet. The interface is not well done, and the App in general just doesn’t feel right. K9 is fast, the icon sucks, and can be a good alternative, but not yet.

About MailDroid Pro, the feelings about the App was generally the same as K9, and the App somehow failed to notify at times as new mails arrived. Comparing all of this to the iOS mail App experience which includes unified inbox, custom text styling, amazing notifications, instant download, better viewing, and an amazing navigation system, I have to say that email on Android absolutely sucks. For every App developer out there, you’ve got a huge market!

Is it just me or even you hate the Android email experience? Share your thought using the comments section below.

Vinay

Horrible experiencrv can’t get worse then this. The native client does not fetch email when set to Pop nor does IMAP push function get emails. Email notification has a mind of its own. All in all a very bad experience.
Jas88

absolutely horrible. not one email app that i have found can select multiple to:, cc:, or bcc: recipients from a contact list.
For example: I want to send an email to my daughter and cc: my son… using my Asus tablet, comcast email site.
I select my daughter from my contact list – she goes in the To: field. Fine.
I click in the cc: field, wanting to add my son as a cc:.
I don’t know his email address, so i click on my contacts again and select him.
I get back to the compose screen and he’s in the to: field and my daughter is gone…
How i would ever add multiple cc: from my contacts is certainly a lost cause.

WTF?
Android is definitely hokey, unpolished, and not-there-yet.
bpalladino

I love my Samsung Galaxy S2. It made me switch from the iPhone. I was one of those guys that bought every iPhone on release day.

I never sold my iPhone 4 because I still use it to read email…
You would think that google would have the best email product on the market considering that next to their search engine, they were pretty much built off of gmail. Android email is a joke. People will say how much functionality the gmail app itself can do, but it still looks utilitarian. Do android app developers have something against eye candy? Can’t we have functionality and freedom, and look good doing it too?
Mohan Kannegal

absolutely agree… email client on android is stunningly buggy. stops delivering email at random intervals. looks ugly. Yahoo email client is good. But could be better.
Anonymous

I just got my 1st Android (LG Lucid) after many years of using Palm phones, most recently the Palm Pre Plus with webOS (which HP has basically killed). The Palm webOS is simple, intuitive and especially for email extremely powerful and user friendly. Android is none of that. I thought that because I’m already a Gmail user (from when you needed an invitation to get it) this would be perfect. Did a person design this, or was it a committee of engineers each one pushing their own geeky agenda and then they threw all of the ideas into one clunky almost unusable program? Horrible.
http://profile.yahoo.com/RXQH36JIWU6F2AV7KRPMQHKB6M Albert

Agree absolutely and more! The Gmail app functions ok but the Yahoo mail app is not functioning on my Toshiba AT100. Besides the very plain layout, the mails in the Sent Folder could not be displayed at all. (Any sent mail just contained the header and no more, and no mail content is dispalyed.) There is a hide details and show details button at the top right hand corner. Clicking it does not produce any change. Furthermore, characters in the Yahoo app and its email app could not be expanded or contracted as in other apps.

I have an ipod touch and I must say its apps function more correctly than the Android tablet. The ipod email apps integrates all my email accounts seamlessly.
http://twitter.com/MikeeNu Mikee Catacutan

God I am having the SAME frustrations. I have 10 days left to return my HTC One X and I never once thought email would be so FUGLY on a smart phone in 2012. I can’t, for the life of me, get html emails to show properly. It’s either cut off or in a single column, messed up layout. NOT GOOD for a graphic designer. I hear android users talking so much crap about iOS, but I’ve spend hours trying to make things LOOK AND WORK good. UGH.
http://profile.yahoo.com/OHZIOEGM7PSUKTWRRUO47CYWHY Christopher

I would agree the standard email app on my Samsung Galaxy sucks. It would take days or even weeks for it to get email sent to me on my bellsouth.net (yahoo) accounts, and now I can’t even get any email at all. It would tell me I have x number of messages on the main screen, but when I open that account to view the messages, all I get is an empty inbox constantly asking me to reload for more messages, but it never works. And to top it off, it freezes very often making it unusable. So darn frustrating.

The Gmail app on the adroid works pretty well, but I hate the way good groups messages together making them hard to read but its better than that other poor excuse for an email app.

I also tried the yahoo mail and it works better than the POS default email app, but it just sooo slow I uninstalled it. For my gmail accounts I can use the gmail app with no problem, but for my yahoo accounts its actually quicker for me to go to the phones web browser and check my mail from there.

I should just completely uninstall the default email app on this phone, its useless and takes up space.
Tunnelrunner

Im learning the hard way what you all know know. I “upgraded” from an iPhone 4 to a Galacy S 3 a few days ago. There are some really cool things that Android does well (Google Maps blows Apple Maps 6.0 away. Trust me, voice control is second to none) but the e-mail app (as you stated) is horrendous, unless you’re a strict Gmail user.
Stanjones

Email on an Android device is CRAP. I switched from a 2 year old Palm Pre 2 to a Nexus 4. Email on the Pre 2 was better (in fact, I think it’s better than iOS). I can’t access my work email (ActiveSync) without being forced to accept the security cert to encrypt my entire phone?!? When I try 3rd party apps (K-9, Touchdown, Moxier, etc), they are half-baked, terrible UI, and/or cost $20. It’s 2013, why do I have to buy an email program because the stock program simply sucks?

Email is done beautifully on iOS, Windows, and yes, Palm (!). If I only used Gmail, I’d be fine. But corporate email is almost an afterthought.
Guy

I agree. Also you cannot return a deleted mail to its original folder if you need to.
Leger
Maks

I use iPhone and I am verry satisfied with iOS apps and functionality. When I decided to buy a tablet I said I should give a chance to Samsung Galaxy TAB 2 7.0. I am using it 3 months and I am so nervous because of this Android ICS bugs, I can’t stand it anymore. The Mail app in Android is such a pain that I am selling my Samsung and will buy iPad mini as soon as I sell it. There are also many other bugs I can’t believe Google lives with them even in Jelly Bean. Grrrr… No more Android for me… People, beware!