I decided to try both email apps on my Note 4 to see which one I preferred. It didn’t take long to decide to deactivate the Gmail app. But why?
There’s this rumour that stock android and it’s apps are the best way to go. Well in some circumstances that is the case. Google recently added the option to add non Google email accounts within its Gmail app and this works as advertised. The pros of using the Gmail app is email can be deleted in the notification area and with an android wear watch and your Gmail email gets sorted into different folders eg. social, primary, promotions and updates. But that’s as far as the pros go.
So now let’s see why you will be using Samsung’s email app.
1) Signatures – these can have active links, editable with a number of styles, fonts and with the Note 4 you can use the S-Pen to add your signature.
2) Email layout – simple inbox style with choice of standard or conversation views making managing email easier especially if you get lots. Combined inbox for all your emails. You also get a priority inbox which shows only priority contacts email regardless of which email account they used.
3) Email sync options are more advanced with much Samsung’s email app offering more sync timing options. The Gmail app only has a max sync time of 1 hour. Samsung email has every 4 hours and once a day and for each email account you can setup a different peak time sync schedule, even selecting which days of the week thst are to be used.
4) In Gmail not all url’s are show as a tapable link. Samsung’s email app doesn’t have this issue.
5) New emails have a word formatting option. See screen shot.
6) If you use a Samsung smart watch like the Gear S which has an email app of its own, the wearable uses the Samsung email app data/settings from the phone.
Overall the Samsung email app provides a more consistent, comprehensive and complete experience and in turn highlights the weaknesses of Google’s own Gmail app. However, if you only have one Gmail email account then the Gmail app maybe all your ever need.
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