On Third Party Mail Clients for iOS

On this whole third party mail client thing for iOS, as much as the guys working on Sparrow would pour lots of love into designing a companion to their OS X mail client for iOS, we still are faced with one road block — and it’s a major one — there’s still no provision for setting a preferred default mail client in iOS.

Let’s say I’m on my iPhone and I pull up a contact and decide to email that person. Right now, what would happen is a blank email sheet would open using Mail.app. With a third party email client, that same process would still launch Mail.app app on your iPhone. So what exactly is the point of developing another mail client for iOS?

I love Mail.app, and there’s little that I can think of that could be added now that would make it a better experience for me, especially since iOS 5. One feature that Sparrow has over Mail in OS X, is that you can connect it with your Facebook account. Doing this will make it so that any time someone emails you, who also happens to be a friend on Facebook, would have their profile picture show up. That’s probably not a big deal for a lot of people, but it’s kind of a nice touch if you’re a Facebook user. I can really live without this though, so it’s not a deal breaker for me.

I really welcome more choice, and it’s great that Apple is approving apps like Google’s new Gmail app for iOS (even though it’s junkie). Until there’s a way to set your preferred mail client in iOS, I can’t see myself making a permanent switch to anything else.

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If you want a teaser of what Sparrow’s iOS app will look like, head on over to their site for a sneak peak.