Mailbox. Good but not good enough?

Mailbox iPhone App

So after over two weeks of waiting the Mailbox App and now over 750,000 people behind me waiting I now have access and the opportunity to review it.  There is one thing to bear in mind before I begin is that it only works with Gmail in case you are using another email provider.

At first glance I must say that I do indeed like the app.  I was skeptical about the hype, but it is very easy to organize and manage your emails, but it is not all sunshine and roses here.  That said lets talk about the good stuff first.

There are a couple Big Advantages compared to the native email client app.  Firstly, you do not need to look at each individual email to choose what to do with it.  You can get rid of spam without opening it for example with just a swipe of you finger. 

Second I love that you can postpone emails to show up in your inbox tomorrow for example.  This ensure you do not forget about it if it is important as it appears again as a new email,  almost like a reminder function.  Again the swipe of the finger interface is really nice for this. 

You can also categorize your emails with a swipe into the default categories "To Read", "to Watch" or "To Buy" or you can create custom folders as well.

Watch the video embedded here to get an idea about what I am talking about.

Once you have installed the app you will see an additional section on the left hand side column called "Mailbox".  This is where you will find the emails you have categorized as "to watch", "to Buy" etc.  No big deal since you can customize that section within the web app already so Mailbox is just doing that for you.

So now lets talk disadvantages.  However, I have already encountered a limitation since it only works with Gmail.  Currently I have a Gmail and a Hotmail account which I currently manage both within the native app.  So now do I need two applications to manage my emails instead of one now anyways?  Hmmmmm. 

Also, on the iPhone the layout works great, but there is no app native for the iPad so the interface is not quite as appealing especially when you are uses to the iPad virtual keyboard for composing email.

You cannot put the app in portrait mode.  I tried to turn my iPhone sideways so that I could read my email in larger print while seeing the full sentence in one line and it would not turn into portrait mode.  The iPhone screen can feel a bit small for reading so I like reading in portrait mode to make the font a touch larger so this was a disappointment.

Lastly there are some issues with the formatting of some graphs and charts.  look at the examples below.

Here is a chart as it appears in the native email app.

Here is the same chart in the Mailbox app.

Here is a Graph in the native email app.

Here is the same graph in the Mailbox app.

Basically the charts and graphs I experienced are not readable. Not great.

So what is the conclusion?  Well I will not be using the Mailbox app on my iPad.  However, in all fairness the app was not made for the iPad and in reality I do most of my reading on that since it has the larger screen.  Also, I will use the native iPad app to manage my Gmail and Hotmail accounts within the same app.  So will I use it with my iPhone?  Yes.  I do like the layout better than the native app and the quick ability to get rid of spam emails without actually opening them up.  Good for an iPhone.  Any emails I cannot read with graphs or charts I will categorize them for reading later in my iPad or the computer since that is easy to do as well.

Will you use it?