Tune Ninja rates Blue Mail the best Android email app
A 2017 review picks out the two things that made the app stand apart: it worked with every provider, and it let you change almost all of it.
1 min read
Tune Ninja reviewed Blue Mail in July 2017 and placed it at the top of its Android email list. Two qualities carried the verdict.
It worked with everything
The review’s first point was that the app connects to essentially every provider, letting you read several different accounts through one interface rather than one app per mailbox.
In 2017 this was less common than it sounds. Plenty of clients handled one ecosystem well and everything else through a grudging IMAP fallback that lost folders, flags or push along the way.
You could change almost all of it
The second point was customization. Per-sender color coding, configurable behavior throughout the settings, and an interface you could bend toward how you personally work rather than accepting how the designer works.
Color coding sounds cosmetic and is not. When several accounts arrive in one list, color is what stops you replying from the wrong identity. It is a visual cue doing a functional job, and it is the kind of detail that only shows up in a review written by someone who used the app for a fortnight rather than an afternoon.
What has aged, and what has not
The aged part is the framing. In 2017 an email client could be judged mainly on whether it connected to everything and let you configure it. Both are now table stakes, and the questions have moved to authentication, encryption and what the vendor does with your data.
The part that has not aged is the underlying test. A mail client is used thousands of times a month in small interactions, so it is judged on friction rather than features. Whether the gesture you make most often is the one you wanted, and whether the app ever makes you look unprofessional.
Tune Ninja was measuring the right thing, even if the specifics have moved.
Archive note. This piece is from 2017 and is kept for the record. The original Tune Ninja article is no longer available online, so it is credited here rather than linked.
