Things I do not like with Android, and what I would expect instead.
The EMail-App
This is about the normal EMail App on a stock Android 3.1, not about GMail. The connection is via IMAP.
- By default the most recent EMail is on top. If I switch to oldest-first order, the oldest EMail is shown when entering a folder. I want to see the most recent one. If I let the most-recent order, I see directly the newest messages, but when I read the oldest unread message and delete it, the more old message is displayed, instead of the more recent one. KMail is doing this better (it is able to go “up” instead of only “down” to go to the more recent message when the most recent mail is sorted on top), but in KMail I can not select multiple messages as easy as with the normal EMail App (it seems I have to long-tap on a mail and then tell to select the EMail, and just then I can just quickly tab on the very small area on the left of the subject to select more EMails).
- Selecting messages could also be improved. When I select several messages, and then – by accident – enter a message and want to go back, the first “go back” unselects all messages and the second “go back” goes back to the folder-view. I would like to go back directly to the folder-view, instead of unselecting all messages.
- The folder-view itself is also not nice. I have a lot of folders. IMAP subfolders are separated by a dot, e.g. FreeBSD.arch and FreeBSD.multimedia are the subfolders arch and multimedia in the folder FreeBSD. Each desktop EMail program I used so far was intelligent enough to create a folder-hierarchy out of this, with the possibility to collapse the display of all subfolders of FreeBSD (I have a lot there, not only those 2) into one entry. If I want to field something in my hierarchical folder structure, I have to scroll a long list of folders, instead of just (auto-)opening (during drag&drop) the correct hierarchy.
- I do not find an option to tell that the App shall have a look at more than the default inbox to look for new messages. If I want to know if there is a new message in one of the other folders, I must have a look into the folder(s).
- It looks like I can only produce TOFU-replies, I have not found a way to do a proper interleaved-style reply.
- The error messages when setting up an outgoing (and I assume incoming) server are too brief for my taste. As a default it is OK, but there should be an option to enable more verbose/technical error messages for those which are able to understand them.
- It does not optionally save send mails to a specific (configurable) folder.
- It does not allow to cryptocally sign messages (at the moment I do not really care if it is via S/MIME or via PGP).
- I also would like to tab with two fingers, and the text in-between is selected (not only in the EMail-App).