[8125, K-JAM, P4300, MDA Vario General] Menneisyys:
UPDATE (09/17/2006): Please note that after having finished this roundup, a LOT has happened and I’ve published several articles on Pocket PC mailing. Right now, I’d go for FlexMail 2007 particularly because of its excellent IMAP compliance (as opposed to Qmail, which is REALLY buggy when it comes to supporting IMAP), (finally) greatly enhanced speed and Outlook attachment support.

The articles I’ve published in the meantime are as follows (going back in time – that is, the last article I’ve published is the IMAP one):

IMAP(4) access on the Pocket PC (highly recommended as the original article didn't discuss much IMAP)

Is Qmail more efficient than Messaging, bandwidth usage-wise? (it discusses POP3 only; for more interesting results, check out the IMAP(4) article above, which presents and explains a really bad IMAP-specific Messaging bug)

Pocket PC mailer clients & attachments: multiple selection/saving; problems with attachments sent by Outlook: this article is, along with the IMAP one, also pretty important as it directly compares the mass / Outlook attahcment handling capabilities of all (recent: FlexMail 2007, the latest ProfiMail etc.) mailer clients.

This is how you can store your ActiveSync-synchronized Outlook mail on your storage card! Dell Axim x50, HP iPAQ hx4700 and hx2x1x, hx275x WM5 users, attention! - this article may also be of interest, particularly if you synchronize your Outlook mail via ActiveSync.

The secrets of being notified of new, incoming E-mail messages on the Pocket PC (POP3 only; check out the latest, IMAP-related article on IMAP.) Note that it (still) discusses FlexMail 2006; now, FlexMail 2007 already supports mail fetching on suspended Pocket PC Phone Edition devices (see the IMAP(4) article). That is, you may want to read it but remember to read the IMAP article too to get the latest information and the best way (IMAP IDLE) to access mail, Push Mail-like.

IBE Group has released IBE Mail with very good specs. Failing to deliver though...: not recommended if you don't want to get IBE Mail.

How do I create and send HTML e-mails from my Pocket PC?: some (minor) tips

Ever wanted to change your Messaging account names?: other (minor) tips

Alternative mailer client nPOP 1.0.7 released - now, with SSL (incl. Gmail) support! (the reviewed version below is 1.0.6, still without SSL support. Remember, the situation has changed in the meantime.)

Now, for the original article (I’ve kept it intact; I’ll rewrite it some time to reflect the latest changes):

E-mail is part of our life. Pocket PC's are especially well suited for receiving/ reading/ answering to mail; why not use them for handling e-mail?

The aim of this roundup is to

make it easier for you to choose the right e-mail client based on your needs

give you tips on using your favourite ones

give you exact, thorough standards compliance test results. Thorough standards compliance tests require being or having been involved in actual mailer library development. I've co-authored some SMTP and POP3 libraries for IBM so I do know how all the underlying protocols work / how mail messages should be processed.

Disclaimer: this is not a tutorial of each e-mail application (make some Google searches/ look around on the developers' homepages for simple tutorials/ reviews). It's a very thorough test and comparison with a lot of of practical usage tips. Make sure you really thoroughly scrutinize the comparison chart and the chart explanation – you'll find literally dozens of never-before-published tips and tricks (for example, "How do I make nPOPw be invoked when I click a 'mailto' link? How do I display HTML mails in nPOPw that the simple "External view" didn't display? How do I set up my Gmail account in mailer client X? How do I request read receipts in mailer applications that don't support sending out receipts but allow for editing the outgoing mail headers?" etc.)

First, let's have a look at all the mailer clients for the Pocket PC, their strengths and weaknesses.

The built-in (Pocket) Inbox / Messaging client

Messaging (which, up to the WM2003 operating system, was called (Pocket) Inbox) comes with every Pocket PC built-in. It's a basic E-mail client with really basic capabilities. It, however, has certain strengths:

it's available even after a hard reset and even without downloading/purchasing/installing anything

its scheduled mail fetching capabilities are the best because it integrates into the Windows Mobile operating system far better than its alternatives.

It, along with FlexMail, is the only application to be able to access ActiveSync-synchronized mails.

It, however, lacks a lot of basic functionalities; for example, downloading mail from multiple POP3/IMAP accounts at the same time and support for HTML mail. Also, it uses a very bad, system-unfriendly approach to keeping track of e-mails: it uses internal Windows CE databases (see this blog entry if you're interested in what these databases are like) which is a very bad approach as far as the overall speed and responsiveness of the system is concerned. Furthermore, it stores all mail messages (except for attachments – please see this tutorial and this thread on relocating them to a storage card) in the main memory – this isn't a good approach either.

Finally, especially on pre-Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC's, it has some bugs. See for example this blog entry on one of the most important one.

Verdict: Messaging certainly beats the competition in scheduled mail fetching on suspended (meaning much less power comsumption) Pocket PC's ("poor man's Push Mail"). Also, if you don't plan to use FlexMail but need to access your ActiveSync-synchronized mails on your PDA, you may need to stick with it.

WebIS Mail

(Tested version: WebIS Mail 2.2beta build 363)

The most important, most widely known commercial alternative of the built-in Messaging – at least up to now. It is better in almost every area than Messaging (HTML and parallel download support, for example) – except for, most importantly, real WM5 support (even the latest beta has very bad WM5 support – no support for the built-in Contacts database, no support for ActiveSync-synchronized mails, problems in sending SMS messages on Pocket PC Phone Edition devices, scheduling just doesn't work etc).

Compared to the alternatives, it also lacks niceties like threaded mail view (nicely supported by Qmail and not-so-nicely by nPOPw). And, as has already been pointed out, its WM5 compliance is quite bad – hope the final version will be released soon. In the meantime, to be used under WM5, I recommend FlexMail, the alternative mailer application from the same developer (see next section).

I've tested the latest 2.2 beta build, 363, which is definitely more capable than the current "official" version, 2.11, which was released in last April.

FlexMail beta 2

WebIS Mail's developer seems to have concentrated all his forces lately on an alternative mailer, FlexMail (there wasn't a new beta version of WebIS Mail in February, while there were two new FlexMail's). Its latest beta, beta 2, has just been released; see this thread. You may also want to see this forum for newer versions when they're released.

FlexMail beta 2 (still?) seems to be very similar to WebIS Mail, GUI-wise (except for the frames around text input fields); this is why I haven't assigned it a separate comparison chart column. I, however, mentioned the differences between FlexMail beta 2 and the also-tested WebIS Mail 2.2beta build 363. These differences are mostly WM5 compliance-related. As it's definitely newer and less buggy, FlexMail should be preferred to WebIS Mail – at least as far as the currently available 2.2beta build 363 of WebIS Mail and the beta 2 of FlexMail are concerned.

These two applications have very few cons. Compared to Qmail, these are as follows:

missing search functionality

no advanced filters

no tree/thread view

lack of mail header autocomplete

weaker signature support (only one for each account)

very slow to start, esp. on WM5 devices

Pros: there are so many pro's that I don't even list them.

Qmail

(Latest, tested version: the nightly builds between 12. Feb - 24. Feb.)

This free (!) mailer client is, in my opinion, probably the best and, some not-that-major capabilities (no ActiveSync support, no scheduling, no read receipt returning etc) aside, most powerful mailer client available for the Pocket PC. It's really capable – for example, it not only supports the traditional mailing protocols, but also the newsgroup protocol (NNTP) and RSS feeds.

The integration of all these protocols in just one program is very nice – you can download all your mails, favorite newsgroups and RSS feeds with only one click, inside the same application! This greatly reduces the time needed for learning the application, tweaking it for your needs and initiating the download of new mails/messages/articles.

Note that Qmail has no decent documentation. The only one available here is far from being full. I'm, however, working on a full tutorial of it and will soon publish it. A really quick introduction to configuring its NNTP reader can be found here. Note that it only discusses NNTP and is, therefore, doesn't give you a full picture of all the aspects of Qmail.

You can download the latest nightly builds from here if you have either WM2003SE or WM5. If you have a WM2003 device, get this; for PPC2k2, this and for PPC2k: (this) ARM, (this) SH3 or (this) MIPS.

In most cases, you won't need the additional OpenSSL package (direct link, as of end of February, here). If you do want to access e-mails through SSL (for example, via Gmail), though, you'll need it. See the "Gmail" row in the comparison chart on setting up the SSL library.

Cons (these are almost all advanced stuff; only really advanced clients like WebIS/FlexMail support these. That is, this section is more of a nit-picking than listing indeed severe problems.)

No ActiveSync synched mail-support

No mailto: support

No scheduled mail fetching capabilities

No read receipt sending capabilities

No menu-based receipt/importance/Reply-to setting capabilities – you need to directly edit the RFC 822 headers, which is highly error-prone

No socks server support

No Landscape support on the settings screens

Pros (especially compared to WebIS/FlexMail):

The only app to support global searching capabilities

NNTP and RSS are also supported

Outgoing mail header editing capabilities

really advanced filters and scripting capabilities

excellent tree/thread view

excellent mail header autocomplete

excellent signature support

excellent font size/type/color setting support – much better than any other app

nPOP and nPOPw

(Latest, tested version: nPOPw 1.0.1.4 Beta 2.)

Many people confuse these two applications so it's the best to explain the differences right away. nPOPw, being a further developed version of nPOP, knows everything nPOP knows but, in addition, has some added functionality like read/delivery receipts, priorities and access to the Pocket Outlook system contacts database. Therefore, you may only want to download nPOPw from here (see this main download page) and forget nPOP altogether.

This mailer client is certainly not as capable as its competitors. Even its HTML support, praised by many, is definitely weaker than that of WebIS Mail or Qmail. It completely lacks SSL support; therefore, you can't use it to access for example Gmail. Its main advantage is its size (not that Qmail were much bigger) and being really easy (this is, at least at first, will be a real advantage over Qmail for newbies!).

Cons

absolutely no Unicode support

absolutely no SSL (including gmail) support

no IMAP

with multipart messages, it takes some work to pass the HTML part to an external viewer to be seen

no clickable links in plain text messages

Pros: as opposed to Qmail,

much easier to learn/use (except for detaching HTML parts (attachments) and invoking an external viewer on them)

mailto: works

A warning: PPCFreewares links to a H/PC (non-PPC) version at yetanotherhomepage, the well-known Jornada 720 software repository. It has severe UI problems on Pocket PC's – it not only uses a "floating" window but also lacks the icons on the icon bar at the bottom (the ones you can see in the previous screenshot is those of Pocket File Explorer.) Therefore, you'll need to download the archive file linked by me, not that of PPCFreewares!

You may also want to check out the nPOP-related Yahoo group for more information on what's going on with the enhancements and this page for an excellent manual. The latter discusses the H/PC version of the application; therefore, the screenshots are a bit different. Nevertheless, the tutorial can also be used with the Pocket PC version.

ProfiMail 2.37

This mailer application is a direct port of a Symbian mailer. This can be seen even on the GUI, which mimics Symbian's traditional two software buttons and the D-pad combination. Too bad these on-screen buttons can't be used with the WM5 softbuttons – you will end up having to use the stylus. Bad, Lonely Cat Games, bad!

The application itself also has a lot to be desired – particularly the high price (even WebIS Mail is cheaper, not to mention the vastly superior and free Qmail!), the sub-par HTML rendering engine, the impossible-to-switch-off custom "soft" fonts (which will drive nuts anyone that hates soft fonts – I'm one of them. This is why I always disable ClearType too), the lack of clickable links in plain text messages and the lack of text select/copy unless in edit mode.

Cons:

no background fetching

very slow to download mail bodies

not very sophisticated HTML renderer – PIE/IEM-based ones (WebIS/FlexMail, Qmail and even nPOPw) are better in this respect

software buttons not connected to WM5 buttons

no clickable links

missing copy-to-clipboard support

no multiple mail selection

no stylus-less way to move to the next mail, unlike with all other mailers

no SOCKS server, no logging,

no mailto: support

no read receipt/reply-to setting

no way to log the communication

no way to examine mail headers, unlike with all the three third-party, alternative mailers

Pros

unlike all the other third-party apps, it has no problems with UTF-8 (Unicode) and/or 8-bit mail headers

Better downloading rules than those of WebIS/FlexMail

any number of signatures

Version check/update

Built-in data counter

Please note that you'll need to modify the default connection in order to be able to access your mailboxes through all kinds of connections (AS Internet pass-through, BT dial-up etc). Contrary to what the app states (see the explanation at the bottom of the screenshot), there's no "Default" connection. This won't be a problem if you choose 'The Internet' in most cases.

Pocket SpamFilter 1.4

This application is meant for spam handling on the Pocket PC. You may want to read this and this page for a description of what spam is and how an individual should/can fight against it.

The application has an extensive, manually editable spam host (see \My Documents\SpamFilter\blacklisteddomains.flt) and spam word (filters.flt in the same directory) list. With some manual work/Googling, however, you may find an even better spam block list on the Web. You can freely use those lists with the free and, as a mail reader, vastly superior Qmail.

Yes, Pocket SpamFilter is a very-very weak mail reader application, particularly if you take into account its high price. I can't really mention any advantage it offers over the other mailer clients in this test – on the contrary. It's so weak that it doesn't even handle mail attachments or server certificates (nPOPw supports both). It's totally unable to send outgoing mail (read: it doesn't support SMTP) and completely lacks SSL support (read: no Gmail, for example). Its only advantage (that is, the spam hostlist / the subject/mail body filter) can very easily and, what is more, automatically be implemented in Qmail (I'll elaborate on this question later, in the Qmail tutorial), rendering the only advantage of this application non-existing.

Verdict: now that Qmail is able to do the same (or even better) level of spam filtering, not recommended.

Comparison chart

The comparison chart can be found here. (Sorry, the blog engine doesn't make it possible to include large HTML tables in here; therefore, I need to link it.)

Comparison Chart Explanation and Comments

First, it's the best not to maximize the comparison chart window so that you don't need to switch between the image and the chart browser windows. It's best to put them side by side as can be seen in this screenshot – then, if you just click a link in the chart, the screenshot image will be updated in the other browser window at once, without any human interaction/window switching.

+ stands for exists/passed; - stands for doesn't exist/failed.

Price: nothing to add. As can be seen, the best mailer app (not taking Qmail into account), WebIS Mail/FlexMail, is commercial. It, however, is cheaper (particularly for Europeans) than ProfiMail, which I consider far inferior to both Qmail and WebIS Mail/FlexMail.

Everything on a storage card? : can the application be installed on storage cards to save main storage memory? Can they store their databases (files) on storage cards? All of the mailers can - it's only Messaging that is clearly lacking in this respect.

Operating system / screen orientation/VGA mode compliance group: in here, I've collected generic, system-level compliance information. As can be seen, the two free apps (nPOPw, Qmail) support all operating systems. Qmail has certain problems with the landscape orientation (and, therefore, most probably with square-screen devices like the Treo 700w, the HP hw65xx and other, 240*240 devices).

Usability group: everything related to usability (for example, readability in native VGA mode, easy-to-use with hardware keys etc).

Freely settable font sizes (making use of high-resolution VGA screens in standard SE mode?): you need to check this out, particularly if you have a VGA device, because with clever font size settings, you can greatly enhance the volume of information shown on your screen. For example, you may want to decrease the header font sizes so that much more can be seen of them without any scrolling, while not touch or, especially in native VGA mode, increase the font size of message bodies so that you don't need to strain your eyes while reading the messages themselves.

Qmail is by far the best in this respect – it lets you fine-tune font sizes (and types/colors) of different GUI components (headers, list, message texts etc) separately. This approach is far better than that of the other applications, which all use a "one-size-fits-all" approach to font size setting.

Mail header autocompletion, independent of that of Windows Mobile?: this feature can be overly useful – see for example this screenshot to understand its importance. Unfortunately, only Qmail supports this – not even WebIS Mail/FlexMail. Note that, as far as other forms of autocompletion are concerned, I haven't created a separate test case for listing the most commonly used username combinations based on the e-mail address supplied at setting up the account because I didn't deem it necessary / overly useful. WebIS Mail/FlexMail is the only mailer capable of this, as can be seen in this screenshot.

Links clickable in non-HTML mails?: If you use Pocket PC discussion forums a lot and also subscribe to notifications, you may have already noticed that these notification mails contain links. If you just click them, the given thread will open in your browser. In this test, I've examined how the mailer applications render links in plain text (that is, non-HTML) messages.

As can be clearly seen, nPOPw and ProfiMail severely lack this feature, while the other mailers have it. That is, if you receive a lot of links in plain e-mails and you want to click them right away, don't ever plan to use nPOPw and ProfiMail as the main mailer application.

Select text and copy support?: you'd assume all mailer clients are able to select arbitrary text and copy it to the clipboard? Unfortunately, that's not the case – at least with not ProfiMail. You can only do this if you reply to/forward a mail that contains the text you'd like to put on the clipboard so that you can paste it to other applications. This is really a big problem for anyone that wants to use his or her mailer client effectively and quickly!

Easy accessibility from Today screen while minimized?: two applications (WebIS/FlexMail and nPOPw) put an icon on the bottom bar of the Today screen so that you can easily open/access them. In addition, Messaging has a fully-fledged (it is not only a simple icon, but also displays how many unread messages each account has) Today plug-in. ProfiMail and Qmail, when minimized, don't display anything like these. This is not a big problem though – by just clicking their icon (in, for example, a Today screen launcher) / activating their process, you can easily return to using them.

Select all mail?: Is it easy to select all mail in a folder – that is, is there a dedicated menu item ("Select All") to do this and/or does the on-screen or external keyboard shortcut Ctrl-A work? As can be seen, all mailers are capable of this.

Select more than one mail?: this is a bit more elaborate functionality than the previous, "Select all" one because it either requires support for plainly stylus-based multiple support or more sophisticated support for the on-screen keyboard and can't just be done from a menu. As can clearly be seen, all applications support this – except for ProfiMail. ProfiMail offers no way to select multiple mail messages at the same time to, for example, mass flag them for download. Another thumbs down for ProfiMail.

Search? Qmail has a very-very nice feature: searching (also see Ctrl-Shift-F in Outlook). Unfortunately, no other mailer application is able to do the same.

Tree/thread view?: Threaded view can be a great asset when browsing e-mail, especially with messages that have many answers (see the example screenshots in the comparison chart to see the usefulness of this). Unfortunately, only Qmail and, in a less spectacular way, nPOPw support this; WebIS Mail/FlexMail don't. Note that you can enable this in the desktop Outlook Express at View/Current View/Group Messages by Conversation and in Outlook at View/Current View/By Conversation Topic.

Smooth, custom fonts like those of uBook?: The well-known e-book reader uBook has custom, "soft" fonts, totally independent of the system fonts / ClearType. None of the Pocket PC-based e-mailer apps are capable of this, except for ProfiMail. With the latter, however, using this "soft" font can't be disabled, which can be a big minus if you (just like me) don't really like them.

Generic speed: in here, I've elaborated on the initial loading speed, mail downloading speed, snappiness and responsiveness of the clients. As can be seen, there're two clients that don't behave particularly well. WebIS Mail / FlexMail are very slow to start, particularly on WM5 devices, because of the mail storage it uses in the file system and it's highly unlikely that this will change in the near future (see the first post here on this question). Furthermore, ProfiMail downloads mail bodies really-really slow (much slower than the alternative mailers). This is especially annoying because it's also ProfiMail that doesn't let the user download mail in a background thread; therefore, its slow download speed will be even more painful.

Sorting/Hiding/Displaying mail group: Filters / rules?: Qmail's filters/rules are just excellent. You can fine-tune the way it, for example, displays or fetches messages in every little respect. I will elaborate on these rules, their usage etc. in my Qmail tutorial later.

Next to Qmail, nPOPw also has some kind of filter functionality; it, however, is definitely worse than that of Qmail. Other mailer clients (most importantly, WebIS Mail/FlexMail) don't have anything like this.

Sort by?: How can you sort your messages? The more sorting capabilities, the better. For example, Attachment-based sorting (which is neglected by most mailers) can be very useful when you look for a mail that you know had an attachment but are not sure about anything else (it's something that has often happened to me). Then, just sort your mail based on attachments and you will surely find the given message far easier than otherwise.

Hardware button support group: the ability to be able to scroll inside (long) messages and move to the next one using only the hardware buttons and the directional pad (D-pad) of the PDA is very important as far as one-handed, stylus-less usage is concerned. In this group, I've tested whether it's possible to use the hardware keys of the PDA to (quickly) scroll mail messages and move to the next one when necessary.

D-pad based in-message scrolling?: in here, I've elaborated on the in-message scrolling. "Page" means the message is scrolled down/up a page (the most useful form of scrolling), "row" means row-based scrolling (not as useful as page-based scrolling) and "link jump" is the default scrolling method of Internet Explorer Mobile under WM5. As can be seen, all mailers except ProfiMail support page-based scrolling. (ProfiMail also supports screen drag with the stylus, unlike with other mailers. I don't consider it as useful as page scrolls with the D-pad - after all, it's stylus-based.)

Easy switching between mail messages with D-pad/buttons?: In here, I've elaborated on whether it's possible to move to the next (or, in cases, previous) message using the hardware buttons only. All mailers except ProfiMail support hardware buttons for this purpose; the latter requires the use of the stylus to switch to the next mail, making it far harder to use in one-hand situations.

WM5 SW buttons?: Does the application let the user use the two software buttons of WM5? As can be seen, it's only the built-in Messaging (in WM5) and FlexMail that allow for this. Note that, as has already been pointed out, ProfiMail has on-screen softkeys but they are not connected to the WM5 hardware keys.

Ability to redefine/reassign buttons?: unfortunately, not a single mailer app allows the user to assign buttons to mailer functionalities.

Multiple account support: this group discusses everything related to multiple accounts and whether it's easy to use them, to download all their new mail as easily and quickly as possible etc.

Easy switching between accounts?: How many taps does it take to switch accounts? By default, without using D-pad shortcuts, it takes several taps, especially with WM5, to switch to the Inbox folder of another account in Messaging. If you do use the D-pad for switching, everything becomes really easy and quick.

Alternative apps that (may) have the folder/account list on the screen also offer comparatively fast accont/folder switching capabilities – not as fast as that of Messaging using the D-pad, though.

(Temporarily and easily) disable the synchronization/ access of a given account?: in cases, you may want to remove a given POP3/IMAP account from synchronization if you use a mailer client that has the ability of synchronizing all accounts in one round ("round reception"). All the applications that have round reception are capable of this; Qmail needs a bit more manual work because it doesn't have a direct checkbox for enabling/disabling a particular account.

Note that this is really missing from the desktop Outlook XP – as opposed to Outlook Express.

Can move messages over predefined accounts, not only folders of the same account?: a well-known problem with Messaging is that you can't copy/move a message outside the boundaries of the current POP3/IMAP/ SMS/ActiveSync-synced-mail account, only into another folder in the same account. This isn't the best idea if you, say, want to have a global "saved mail" folder and want to copy mail you want to survive from all your accounts. Fortunately, WebIS/FlexMail and Qmail have a different approach. They let you copy your mails into any folder anywhere (and also let you create any number of custom folders). nPOPw, on the other hand, has far inferior folder support and "only" supports copying messages to a predefined saved messages folder.

Full clear of all folders in an account/all accounts?: in cases, you may want to fully clean up all your folders inside an account as easily as possible (without the need for going into every subfolder, selecting all mail and deleting them). The WM5 version of Messaging has a newly-introduced menu item for this. Some other mailer clients also make this boring task comparatively easy.

Mail protocol support (in addition to POP3) group: IMAP support?: All mailers except nPOPw support IMAP too.

Other protocols?: WebIS Mail/FlexMail support, in addition to POP3/IMAP and ActiveSync-synced mails, SMS messages (on Pocket PC Phone Edition devices); Qmail supports NNTP and RSS.

Interoperability with Messaging, ActiveSync and the Windows Mobile databases group: a big problem with all the third-party mailer applications that they, in general, don't try to interoperate with the WindowsCE mailer databases.

Of course, this can be understandable to a certain degree - this was a little-known area up until I've published a complete description of these databases. Now that these databases are not an unknown territory any more, it would be nice if third-party applications would be able to import from/export to/use them to either read/store mails in them or import/export user account information to/from them. Unfortunately, this is (still) not the case. (Developers! It's indeed worth subscribing to my blog ;) ).

Note that the fact itself that third-party applications don't natively use the same databases/files as Messaging isn't a problem – actually, on the contrary (at least as far as non-import functionalities are concerned). Big WindowsCE databases are bound to slow down the system and the other restrictions the Messaging WindowsCE database/file system approach (for example, mail bodies can only be in the central memory, under \Windows\Messaging) has are also a pain in the back. The capability to export/import mails/account data, however, would be a big plus.

Does it use the same WinCE databases and file system files as Messaging?: as can be seen, it's only WebIS Mail/FlexMail that is able to (partially) access this data.

If it doesn't use WinCE DB's / \Windows\Messaging, what does it use?: all the third-party mailers use their own file format to store mail headers and/or bodies. In here, I've elaborated on these.

Able to import predefined Messaging mailer accounts?: as has already been pointed out, none of the mailer applications are able to import user accounts defined in Messaging and, therefore, stored in the WindowsCE mailer databases. This could be possible because all the information (except for passwords) is there in a very easily accessible format.

Access to built-in Contacts database?: another question is the ability to access the WindowsCE Contacts database. As can be seen, all of the applications can access them, even under WM5. That is, you can use your Contacts database from all the PPC mailer applications. You will, however, explicitly need to allow them to do so – please see my remarks/screenshots on configuring them.

Able to read ActiveSync-synced Outlook mail?: only WebIS Mail/FlexMail is able to access the ActiveSync-synchronized desktop Outlook mail. Again, this could be very easy to implement, based on my description of the WindowsCE mailing database format.

Explicit Mail Export; if not supported, is the native mail storage format easy to read / does it contain every header/attachment?: some applications (namely, Qmail) even allow for exporting mail. In here, I've scrutinized these capabilities, along with the file format these applications use to store mail. Most applications use a format that is very easy to read for humans; some (most importantly, WebIS Mail/FlexMail) use a format not-that-readable.

Uses mailto:? A decent mailer should consider a mail address passed to it as a request to compose a mail. Exactly this happens when you click a "mailto" link in your Web browser. Messaging and WebIS/FlexMail allow for this by default (the latter by an explicit assignment); nPOPw via a direct registry edit (overwriting the default value in [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto\ Shell\Open\Command]). Unfortunately, Qmail and ProfiMail don't allow for such kind of functionality. To test this functionality, you can find a test page here (the one I also used for testing and taking the screenshots.)

HTML support: group: everything related to HTML mails, as opposed to plain textual ones. HTML mails are really popular because of the additional text formatting / image capabilities.

Unfortunately, the HTML support is painfully missing from Messaging. All the alternatives, on the other hand, support HTML (to some degree):

Web IS/FlexMail and Qmail has excellent HTML support (they use the underlying Internet Explorer engine for rendering),

ProfiMail has much worse support, completely lacking the ability to render, for example, tables; still, the level of support it provides may be sufficient for most HTML mails

Finally, nPOPw. It doesn't have built-in support for HTML but you can pass the currently (!) shown mail part to an external viewer (say, Internet Explorer). I've emphasized currently because this also means with HTML mail messages that are multipart (with the MIME type multipart/alternative or multipart/mixed), the situation is a bit – but not much! – worse.

There're three commonly used types of HTML mails; I've tested and listed the varying degree of support of these applications for all of them.

One-part mail messages with text/html type: an example of these are the HTML newsletters sent out by SearchNetworking.com. These mail messages only contain one part with the MIME type text/html. All the mailers are able to render these without any problems; nPOPw too, with just passing the page to an external Web browser via File/External viewer.

Multipart mails, the first part being text/plain and the second a text/html one: this is also a very common format, used by numerous desktop mailer applications (for example, Outlook Express - but not Outlook!) as the output format, the Pocket PC Thoughts HTML e-mail etc.

These mail messages consist of two parts: a first, textual part and a second, HTML part. Third-party mailers except nPOPw have no problem rendering the HTML part of these messages. nPOPw, on the other hand, will only show the textual ("dumb") part. Passing this text-only part (as opposed to the first HTML mail message type explained above) to the external viewer via File/External Viewer won't help the situation – the same (plain text) body will be sent to the browser.

Fortunately, there's a solution. The second (the real HTML, not just the stripped-down / meaningless plain text) part is considered to be an attachment by nPOPw and can, therefore, be saved in the file system in the Edit menu, where the lowermost menu item is the attachment MIME type (in this case, text/html).

If it's indeed a text/html, then, just save it under any name and click on the saved HTML file with a file explorer tool like the built-in File Explorer. The results will be as you'd expect.

Unfortunately, the desktop Outlook mailer, by default, uses a third format unreadable by most other mailers, including all Pocket PC-based ones (even the latest FlexMail / Qmail). It, by default, creates HTML parts with the content type 'application/ms-tnef' (see the message source here). You can easily spot these messages in nPOPw (or the other mailer, Qmail, which doesn't automatically hide winmail.dat parts/attachments) because, instead of text/html, you'll see winmail.dat. This is the subject of the following test case, Native Outlook HTML (winmail.dat) support?. Note that ProfiMail and FlexMail just hide these attachments so that they don't confuse users (and, naturally, they render the plain text part).

It's worth knowing that there're several solutions to this problem, even for old Psion computers - but still not for Pocket PC. If there existed a tool like this, you could just save winmail.dat to the local file system and extract the files inside so that they become readable by compliant Pocket PC document readers. You can also consider deactivating this mode in Outlook; please see this and this for more information on this.

Note that as all mailers support normal file attachments; I've tested them all. All worked flawlessly; hence the lack of a test case in the comparison chart.

Display inline (external) images referenced from HTML files?: HTML attachments arrive without images enclosed; they must be fetched by the mailer application. In general, you need to explicitly enable them to do so by, for example, switching in the "online" mode (I've made screenshots of the given menu items).

Fetching mail group: everything related to fetching mails from the server.

Does it only display mail that is still on the server? : one of the most-criticized problems with Messaging is that it does not show older messages (messages that have been deleted in the meantime) in the Inbox unless you explicitly (mass-)move them to a separate folder. As can be seen, it's, in addition to Messaging, only nPOPw that deletes the messages from the local view that don't exist on the server any more. The other mailer applications don't.

Does it download all the pre-defined mailboxes at once (round reception)?: Another big problem with Messaging is its inability to download all the new messages from all your accounts in one step. All the alternative mailers are capable of this.

Settable amount of downloading?: in order to save bandwidth usage (and costs related to it), all mobile mailers allow for constraining the download size. More sophisticated ones allow for fine-tuning this (the exact number of kilobytes/rows to be downloaded).

Fetching mail in the background? : a decent mailer client should make it possible for the user to start/continue browsing the mail messages while the mails are still being downloaded – you see, the latter can be pretty time-consuming, while you may want to continue working. The only application that does not support this is ProfiMail.

Scheduled/periodical fetch (if supported) group: scheduled/periodical mail fetching has been present in Messaging ever since the beginning and can be overly useful, particularly if it can also be active while the Pocket PC itself is suspended, but the built-in phone isn't – which is the case with Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. Think of this as the "poor man's Push Email" (Push Email is the current buzzword and I will elaborate on using it on Pocket PC's a lot) – it's not much worse/less capable than Push Email if the given mailer application supports scheduling/ periodical fetching on a suspended Pocket PC.

I've thoroughly tested Messaging in suspended mode on my WM5 HTC Wizard Pocket PC phone. Worked wonderfully. The suspended mode made it possible to achieve days of availability – which would have only been some, say, 15-20 hours in a non-suspended mode.

Of course if you don't need periodical checking on a suspended Pocket PC (but on, say, an always-on Pocket PC on a charger), the situation is even better: all applications (except for, unfortunately, Qmail) work wonderfully in this scenario, fetching new mail periodically and telling the user about new ones.

Do you need to explicitly start the application to do it? (Tested on a HTC Wizard): do you need to actively start the mailer application to start this periodic mail fetch? With the exception of Messaging, you do.

Can it wake up the PPC (that is, does it integrate into the WinCE system well enough?)? : unfortunately, as has already been pointed out, only Messaging can run on a suspended Pocket PC. All the other periodic fetch-capable applications are also stopped as soon as the Pocket PC is suspended.

Does it automatically connect? Does it disconnect / can you configure it to disconnect after the session?: if you use a dial-up connection to access your mail, automatic connection/ disconnection may be beneficial, particularly if you use a traditional, non-GPRS-like dial-up connection if the dial-up session is only active while you're actively downloading mail.

All the apps are capable of initiating the connection, but none of them closes it after each fetching session (not even Messaging). I don't know whether this is because the test connection was a GPRS/EDGE session and not a "real" dial-in one. Hope they work better (that is, they hang up the phone) with real dial-up connections – as far as I remember, the Inbox clients in my old Handheld PC's were capable of doing this.

Does it notice you of new, arrived mail?: In here, I've elaborated on the notification form they use (sound/vibrating alarm) and the way of enabling it.

Deleting mail group: Auto-delete mail off the server?: can you instruct the mailer to auto-delete the mail (after a given period) off the server. See the screenshots for the options offered by the clients.

Manual delete mail off the server?: when you delete a mail from the local mailer client, does the client also delete the given mail from the server? This is handy when you, for example, delete spam mail manually right away from the POP3/IMAP server but keep all the important ones for further, for example, desktop-based access.

Reading mail: Does it send receipt when requested?: unfortunately, only WebIS/FlexMail are able to send a read receipt to the sender; for example Qmail isn't.

Editing mail group: everythign related to editing mail.

Settable priority? : most clients are able to set the priority of the outgoing mail. Qmail is an exception; still, as it has a Header Edit mode, you can manually enter the appropriate header (as with, for example, receipt requests and reply-to addresses).

(Note that, on the desktop, you can set the priority level in Outlook with the priority (exclamation mark) icon and, in Outlook Express, in Message/Priority).

Request receipt?: is it possible to request a read/receive receipt from inside the application?

(Outlook: Options button on the default mail toolbar, Delivery options group, Have receipt... textfield; Outlook Express: Tools/Request Read Receipt)

Attach files?: all these mailers are able to attach files to messages.

Reply body include/indentation?: is it possible to change how the original message body is included in the original message, and/or change the message that introduces the included message?

Forward style setting?: when forwarding a mail, there're two traditional ways of including the forwarded mail in the new one: in the traditional way (as if it was just replied to but without indentation), and in another way, which makes sure the original mail is not changed, using the message/rfc822 type. Only Qmail supports the latter type. It's not a major problem with the other mailers though.

Signature: all mailer applications support creating mail signatures. Some (for example, ProfiMail and Qmail) allow for creating even several, different signatures and choosing from them at message-writing time. Other mailers only support one signature per account.

Auto-send copy to self/to a given address?: if you would like to make sure you also (BCC) post your outgoing mails to yourself so that they are saved in your online mailbox (or, you can make sure they indeed get through of your Internet connection / outgoing (SMTP) server), the auto-send feature with a pre-defined address (if it's not your own address) can be of great help to avoid having to add the appropriate address manually to all your outgoing messages each time you send a mail. All the four alternative mailers know this trick; Messaging doesn't.

Reply-to address?: if you want the (would-be) reply sent to the mail you send out to be delivered to a different address than yours, the ability to supply a reply-to address may be beneficial. Messaging and ProfiMail don't support this at all and WebIS/FlexMail's approach isn't very flexible either (it allows the user to define a reply-to address on the account level, and not on the individual message level). Qmail doesn't natively support this feature, but, in the header edit mode, you can easily supply the correct header (see the example screenshot). nPOPw's approach is clearly the best.

Folders: sent messages? Everything stored?: all mailer apps have a 'sent mail' folder, storing all the outgoing mails.

I18n group: I18n (internationalization) support will be overly important for anyone that wants to send/receive mail using non-Western (also referred to as (ISO-)8859-1) characters.

I've made several compatibility tests in all the possible scenarios/configurations. I don't elaborate on them here because it'd be highly technical stuff, only understandable by people knowing how emails work behind the curtains – feel free to check out the screenshots of both the client screens and the message sources I've thrown them at.

To summarize the tests:

nPOPw shouldn't be used for UTF-8 (Unicode) mailing because it isn't able to decode UTF-8. That is, if the sender client uses UTF-8 for encoding your mail (and you can't override this), forget nPOPw. You can still mail in Western languages using nPOPw – if you disable UTF-8 sending and only send out mails encoded with 8859-1. If you, however, must use a non-Western character set with UTF-8, go for another client.

some clients (FlexMail and Qmail) don't like 8-bit headers. As they're very rare and, on the other hand, these two mailer apps both support both Quoted-Printable and Base64 headers (as well as bodies), you won't really run into problems because of this.

Otherwise, the clients have no compatibility problems with any of the standard encoding schemes. You can safely use any of them for mailing.

none of the clients parse the mail bodies for UUEncoded, manually added attachments. This isn't a problem because almost noone uses UUEncode any more (as opposed to the situation 10-15 years ago) for manually attaching binary data to mail messages. UUEncode support would only be beneficial in Qmail because it's still the main way of adding files to newsgroup (NNTP) messages.

Networking & security group: everything related to advanced networking, authorization and security features with a complete screenshot-based tutorial to setting up Gmail accounts with all the (SSL-capable) mailer clients.

Non-default server ports, thus, allowing for Toonel?: if the given mailer application lets you use non-default server ports, you'll have the chance of accessing more than one of your mailboxes via Toonel. Therefore, if you plan to save communication costs and you have more than one account to access, it's essential that the mailer application you use supports non-standard POP3/ SMTP/ IMAP ports as well. Fortunately, all of the mailer apps support non-standard ports.

Detailed error messages: Does the mailer display verbose error messages? Messaging is famous for being so terse that it takes a lot of guesswork to find out what the real problem is (if there are problems). Applications that present the error messages of the mail servers verbatim, possibly with some additional remarks, are much better in this respect.

SMTP auth: Separate login/pwd settings for SMTP server?: there may be cases when you need to access a SMTP server for sending mail that requires authorization with a login/password pair that is different from that of your incoming (that is, POP3/IMAP) server. In cases like this, having the ability to supply this login/password pair is of great help. All mailer clients support this – even the WM5 version of Messaging. (This is a welcome addition to Messaging, as compared to the previous, WM2003SE version.)

Support for SSL?: SSL support is non-existing in nPOPw and must be separately installed in Qmail. Fortunately, the latter is simple. The other mailers all support SSL.

Gmail compliance? With example screens of setting it up.: In a real-world example, I've set up (and documented all the steps with screenshots) accessing my Gmail account in all the tested mailer clients. As can be seen, it's only nPOPw that can't be used to access gmail (and, for that matter, any mail server requiring SSL support.)

Advanced, protocol-level user-centric features group: Client-server communication logging?: can the client log the client-server communication? This can be very nice if you want to see what happens during a mail fetch/upload session. Two mailers are able to log the communication: WebIS/FlexMail and Qmail.

In-application examining of mail headers? : Does the mailer allow for examining the mail headers (for example, to see which IP it has originally come from)? All the third-party mailers allow for this, except for ProfiMail.

(Outlook: right-click the mail in the mail list view, Options, Internet Headers no-editable textbox; Outlook Express: right-click message, Properties, Details)

Version check/update?: Does the app has built-in version/update checker routines? Unfortunately, only ProfiMail supports this.

Built-in data counter?: Does the app has built-in data counters? Only ProfiMail does.

Verdict

As usual, based on your needs, you'll need to decide yourself which app to get. The information provided in this roundup will definitely help in this.

Personally, my two favourites are WebIS/FlexMail and Qmail. In everyday use, I prefer the latter (Qmail) almost exclusively because I also subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds and newsgroups and Qmail's unified approach makes it much easier to download and read them all and sometimes answer too. If you, however, don't do the same, you may want to give FlexMail a try – it does have advantages over Qmail.

My plans for the near future

First, I'll write a detailed tutorial of Qmail.

Second, as soon as the HTC Wizard Push Mail-enabled ROM update(s) arrive(s), I'll publish a really detailed tutorial on using Push Mail on the Pocket PC, including a tutorial of the publicly available server-side options, with a detailed tutorial on their configuration.

Recommended links

PPCT chief editor Jason Dunn's excellent article on Pocket PC-based E-mailing

ADDITION (03-01-2006): a review of Pocket SpamFilter 1.4. Accordingly modified the comparison chart.

ADDITION (04-20-2006): In Qmail, you must explicitly allow it for using the external address book. In the List view, go to Tool/Options, choose Address Book from the drop-down list and check in "Pocket Outlook".

UPDATE (09/17/2006): PPCT frontpage The article is also discussed at AximSite, MobilitySite and XDA-Developers.