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MailDroid vs. K-9 vs. Others?

Ok,

Ive tried to change any setting to allow pictures, show content, no max preview size, every single setting that I can think of that would prevent these images from displaying. I also restarted the mail client. Ive sent jpegs and bmp's of several different sizes. I rebooted the phone. I have now done everythign that I can think of and cannot get maildroid to display an image. :( Ive run out of ideas.
 
you're trying to get it to display in the email? if so, I haven't seen that yet. You only have the option to download them. I think that's a whole other level to display embedded pics. It's a lot different than displaying html images that are part of the body of the email (if I'm not mistaken).
 
Not only is it not displaying them, but it is not allowing me to save them to sd/download them. Even when it does allow me to d/l the images they are just blank.

I dont want to lie, but I thought that I remembered being able to view an image before??? Although it may have been in the stock email application or k-9.

I may try one more thing when I get home. The emails are being sent with only the attachment and no text. I'll try to send some text in the email and see what happens. I dont remember this being an issue in the past although I only for sure remember saving an mp3 attachment in maildroid. :shrug:
 
just sent myself a pic. hit the paperclip button. the filename came up. pressed the filename and got the option for Astro Viewer and Gallery. Pressed on Gallery and the pic showed up no problem. If I hit the check box and click save it saves it to the sd card. It's the "Save As" that's the problem because it wants one of three specific file managers on your device which is just dumb considering the most popular one (astro) is not included.
 
Your a genius! I get the same results. I am using ESfile explorer rather than astro ( i didnt think that maildroid worked with astro? ) apparently i was wrong.

Well, no matter. IF I just view the file using ES or gallery it works. When I save it to disc it just has a blank image. No matter whether I use save OR save as. The file name is shown in /download but the image file is not viewable.
 
I think he's had trouble with the saving part. I know he's talked about the file manager thing for a while.
 
I just installed k-9 and re-sent some of the same images. It handled them no problem. I was able to preview them in k-9 and then save easily to file location. I re-installed astro, i had uninstalled it because I was under the impression that it didnt work with maildroid, but now I think that I will use k-9 instead until this little issue can get resolved. I will miss the spell checker.
 
I installed K-9 on my HTC Desire yesterday and uninstalled it today.

The default mail app may not be very powerful but, for me, the only real issue I found was that it didn't handle reply-to fields properly!

K-9 though was a bit of a nuisance. Things like the new mail notification having to be manually cleared unless you had it set to search for unread mail when the notification icon was used was a nuisance. The UI itself is, to me, not the best, and it was slow at rendering messages. Another annoyance was that it seemed to randomly choose which messages were read and unread! I went to the unread list for my account and found 6 messages I'd only read 10 minutes before.

So - now I'm having a go with maildroid. The ads are a bit of a nuisance but in the first 10-15 minutes of using maildroid I definitely prefer it to K-9. Saying that, when you're first starting it and it gives you the email and password thing with the option to auto setup, manual setup or import, if you press the auto setup button without entering email and password it just hangs!
 
and you would do that, why?
jmccabe said:
Saying that, when you're first starting it and it gives you the email and password thing with the option to auto setup, manual setup or import, if you press the auto setup button without entering email and password it just hangs!
Click to expand...
 
dbpaddler said:
and you would do that, why?
Click to expand...

Maybe because I've been a software engineer for over 23 years, including a 10 month stint specifically in testing, and trying something like that is likely to show up how much effort the developer has put in to handling exceptions and potentially in to the general quality of the product.
 
you just wrote it like it's a big deal, especially when you have to puff your chest about your years of experience. seems a bit nitpicky. that's all. especially considering he's one guy compared to the massive open project of k9.
 
dbpaddler said:
you just wrote it like it's a big deal, especially when you have to puff your chest about your years of experience. seems a bit nitpicky. that's all. especially considering he's one guy compared to the massive open project of k9.
Click to expand...

Man, you must have too much time on your hands!:rolleyes:
 
This is a good thread - it just seems to me that there isn't a really polished android email client out there yet - which is surprising given the competitivity of Android and it seems to be an issue for quite a few people.

One thing not mentioned above (I don't think) which I find really disappointing is the lack of conversations/threaded views in both K9 and MailDroid - this to me is a deal breaker for both and leaves me back with the vastly less customisable, but very user-friendly gmail app.

One of the main reasons I turned away from the gmail app, despite it working pretty well, was the fact that I can only see 7 conversations/threads on one screen - and the screen is so much bigger than my blackberry but the GUI doesn't handle email anywhere near as well. The potential for Android to handle email just as well, if not better, than berry is there - but no-one seems to be tapping into it and making a nice front end that heavy emailers can actually turn to and use.

I'm no dev, but it doesn't seem like a particualrly tough ask (but it clearly must be, else it would have been done already)
 
pulgoki said:
I just installed k-9 and re-sent some of the same images. It handled them no problem. I was able to preview them in k-9 and then save easily to file location. I re-installed astro, i had uninstalled it because I was under the impression that it didnt work with maildroid, but now I think that I will use k-9 instead until this little issue can get resolved. I will miss the spell checker.
Click to expand...

I have both Astro and Maildroid and have no problems.
I have saved images from emails with no issue.
 
Like others, I too have been frustrated (dumbfounded?) that there is not a better email client on the Android platform. Well, I guess Google's philosophy is to have an open platform and then let those apps (even a core app like email, apparently) be developed by third parties.

Another thing MailDroid has that K-9 doesn't is a folder tree view. K-9 just has a long single list, for example:

INBOX.Projects.Project1
INBOX.Projects.Project2
INBOX.Projects.Project3

While MailDroid is like this:

INBOX -> Projects -> Project1
-------------------> Project2
-------------------> Project3

If you have a lot of nested folders (I have over 100) then a single long list is almost unusable. There were some other things that MailDroid did that K-9 didn't also (and that I can't recall at the moment), but for me the folder tree view thing was the most significant. Some review of the K-9 development forum showed that the folder tree view issue had been discussed / requested for almost two years (as of this writing) and still was only listed as a "low priority enhancement."

Also, the developer (joelangley) is very active in responding to requests and developing the software. Take a look at the discussion thread for his software on SlideME, you can clearly see that he replies quickly!

Also, some have mentioned that $20 is a steep price for an app (I believe it's actually only $18). Personally, I don't understand this logic. How much have we spent on these Android smart phones? My Galaxy Indulge on MetroPCS was $400 (unsubsidized price)! I know others have spent hundreds on their phones as well. And without a proper email client, our wonderful Android devices would not be smart phones, they would just be phones! Personally, I am glad that there is someone out there with the talent to know how to program such an application, because I sure don't! In my view, $20 is cheap for this urgently needed functionality! So let's reward this guy for his work, and make sure it's worth his while to continue development going forward! Of course, if you don't want to / can't afford the $20, there is always the free (ad supported) version.
 
andyknights said:
This is a good thread - it just seems to me that there isn't a really polished android email client out there yet - which is surprising given the competitivity of Android and it seems to be an issue for quite a few people.
Click to expand...


The polish is in Touchdown for all the exchange users and it handles calendar, contacts, notes, etc. But what about all those Outlook users who don't use gmail or exchange?
Developers want to know about good app ideas. How about this one?
 
I just tried Maildroid 1,82 (it has been a while since I've used Maildroid) and I find it much improved and a really nice program.

There are, however a couple of things I've noticed that don't work the way I like (I may just be missing something here):

Even though I've specified that Maildroid open in the Combined inbox, when I tap on a new mail notification, I'm not taken to the Combined inbox, nor to the account that contains the unread email (if there is only new email in one account), but rather to the last page I was on (apparently).

I'd also like to be able to create a desktop shortcut to each account, so I can quickly navigate to a given account from the desktop.

The notification could be more informative as well, showing the number of unread emails and perhaps the subject of the latest unread email in the notification bar.

If I copy a link from a webpage, paste it into an email to myself, send it to myself and read it (all with Maildroid), the link that I emailed is no longer clickable. The built-in Mail program handles this correctly.

I love the fact that you can refresh all accounts at once from the Accounts Page; would it be possible to have an onscreen button to do so, instead of Menu->Refresh Mail?


Thanks for any info anyone can provide and thanks to the developer of Maildroid!
 
Maildroid has always had navigation issues for me. The back button is very inconsistent as is what opens. Emails won't delete in their respective account, but if I go to the Combined Inbox they delete right away. I prepend and index everything yet I still have blank emails when I open them or get no connection errors. They shouldn't even show up in the inbox until they're fully downloaded or at least have an different look to emails that are in process. And I shouldn't be notified until they're downloaded. The Combined Inbox also doesn't refresh when new emails arrive or if it does, it's not consistent. Can only select links and such if I do it from a reply box, but that's also a generic android issue (inconsistency across the platform for things like cut and paste). Can't disagree on the notifications either. K9 has the ability to do individual icons. Then having the number of unread emails on it would be nice then too.

I also don't get the whole top bar thing for batch movement/deletion. There's a lot of wasted space where something like delete/move/spam could be actual icons instead of hidden in another menu.

It's those little things that annoy me and prevent me from dropping coin on the app, besides the fact it's overly expensive for an app considering full office suites are $10. I'll click on some ads though at least. Still think it's a nice program and a better alternative to stock. I actually liked Touchdown while I used it on my Moment too. Haven't used it since though.

Still don't understand why email on Android is so far behind the slick polished email of webOS and iPhone. I don't understand why imap idle isn't standard. Then again, Android's stock PIM functionality is still a bit limited. So they obviously don't give a rat's ass about the "smartphone" aspect of things, which is a shame.

In regards to font size, you can adjust it under global settings -> UI Settings -> Message content font size. Above that is "List items font size" too.
 
DBpaddler,
Thanks...good points in there. I haven't used it long enough to find some of the things you've mentioned.

I agree that the batch operations are one-click removed from perfect; perhaps the developer has many more batch operations planned so he's leaving room by creating a command hierarchy.

Thanks for the tip on font size - I found it so I edited the message to remove that part of my questions.

Everyone's tastes are different, but the eMail program on the iPad/iPhone drives me nuts (font problems, html display issues, no batch delete [I get over 300 emails a day, most of which I just want to delete], notification issues and so on).

I like K9, but it too is definitely not polished.

Thanks for the comments.
 
Very easy to understand why a linux box is having issues with a microsoft box.
Gates doesn't want us to have it our way.
 
I don't know about the functionality of iOS email, but the polish is nice. I like the polish and functionality of webOS email. I haven't used it in a few, but I think it had batch deletion. I'm with you on the # of emails. Batch deletion is key, especially after the early morning rush of daily crap.

I've been using maildrod for quite a while now. started when I got the Epic and Samsung's email wouldn't allow different signatures on different accounts (still lacking after the 2.2 upgrade). Very annoying. Could've dealt with the lack of push had that feature been there, well, at least for a little while. I still use it for Exchange. So I've been playing around with it for quite a bit and was bugging the dev early on. Haven't bothered in a while.
 
joelangley said:
As the MailDroid dev, let me shed some light on your questions:

1. MailDroid is free, I have no paid version
2. IMAP is push and has no control
3. POP3 is pull and can be controlled with a polling interval (go into your pop3 inbox, click preferences, and you will see an option)

If you have any more questions, just shoot me an email.
Click to expand...

Does MailDroid or any android email client store messages on the sdcard?
 
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