I have never been a fan of web browser-based email and over the years have relied on a number of third-party email clients to keep up to date with e-correspondence. This was particularly important when I was working on a European Commission project in the mid-1990s. This normally involved taking a luggable laptop through customs and, due to security issues at the time, I had to strip it right down to show there was no bomb inside!
Thankfully, we then saw the emergence of the predecessors to smartphones — portable digital assistants or PDAs.
I had two, a HP Jordana and a Palmspring. Both had different operating systems, but software on one was superior to that of the other. Trips over to Brussels were lighter as the laptop was left at home, a PDA slipped into a coat pocket and picking up emails was a breeze.
Meanwhile, I discovered Windows -based third party emails. The first was Eudora which was followed by a plethora of clients, so many I can only remember using Pocomail!
Moving forward to Android mobile devices, again I enjoyed playing with a few such as Bluemail, ProtonMail, Nine and I was very happy with Newton but development was so slow and at $50 a year, was bloody expensive. My search for the perfect Android email client came to a grinding halt when I discovered Aqua Mail.
The first thing I liked was the easy setup which automatically covered my Gmail but it also covers Hotmail,. Fastmail, Apple, GMX, EWS, ASOL and others. From a security point of view, Aqua Mail does not collect and store passwords, emails or private mess content. Aqua Mail employs the more secure OAuth2 login method when adding Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Yandex and Office 365 accounts. OAuth2 provides Aqua Mail with secure delegated access to your account by sending off a cryptographically signed token for authentication. It means that password entering is not required. If you want to add an account that your device does not have credentials for, you will need to enter a password. It happens on the account provider’s server to verify the identity. Aqua Mail only receives the authentication token, and you are all set to continue customizing your mailbox.
Built in layers of security to prevent data leaks and phishing threats. Further security is provided by S/MIME certificate, which allows you to sign or encrypt your emails. The benefits are authenticity, integrity, and non-repudiation of the message when digitally signed. Encryption, on the other side, provides confidentiality for both in-transit and at-rest data.
Aqua Mail handles multiple accounts. At one stage it perfectly handled nine email accounts. I am not a huge fan of unified inboxes, so each account was handled separately. Also, I prefer to see individual messages as separate entities, and I can choose this rather than the default threaded option.
If you have an Office 365 account, Aqua Mail synchronizes your contacts and calendar for Exchange and Office 365 accounts.
It can integrate tightly with your system contacts by displaying names and photos. There are also options to indicate unknown senders and auto-save message recipients in your phone’s contact list.
Furthermore, the app will provide you with a suggestions list of e-mail addresses you’ve received or sent mail to recently. The calendar synchronization for Exchange and Office 365 gives you immediate access to your scheduled events. It is completely compatible with any calendar app or widget. Sadly, Aqua Mail does not recognise other calendar apps such as Business Calendar which is where Nine scored heavily.
If you want to save emails, you can save them as a PDF which provides you with an easy print from phone option and can be universally shared without using huge amounts of data as the end file is compressed.
You can make Aqua Mail your own with more than 300 tweaks available covering every aspect of the app.
Aqua Mail is competitively priced at $30 a year — okay it’s $29.99 but I always round up the price of diesel from the ridiculously £1.99.5 per litre. They are kidding no-one.
As the headline suggests, for me Aqua Mail is simply the best
