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Spark is an interesting new way to manage your emails on iPhone and Apple Watch

We've seen here on several email clients with one or another resource more than native or known developers.

Behold, now comes the Spark, from Readdle, and right when he painted the agenda I thought: "Is this other one doing more of the same?" Well, no: I confess that Spark surprised me after a few hours of use because of how well it explored the user's experience (user experience, or UX), something very important especially in mobile devices.


Spark app icon - Readdle Email App

Right from the start, the highlight goes to a clean interface since the process of setting up an email account, which looks like the native of iOS, making it possible to configure different types of emails such as Gmail, iCloud, Exchange, Outlook and others.

With very objective tutorials and images, several important tips for using the app appear the first time you access your email. For now everything is only in English, but for those who do not speak the language right away the figures are very intuitive.

I ended up setting up a personal account, which has a little bit of everything: personal messages, spam, payment notifications, news, etc. Precisely for this reason, Spark surprised me by the way it separates these messages. With a concept similar to cards, the app groups your emails in a completely configurable way, but initially they come as: New (New), Notifications (for payment alert emails, received, updates from sites like Spotify, among others), Newsletters (news emails, advertisements, etc.), Pins (marked for follow-up) and Inbox (all your other emails already read).

Another highlight of Spark is how to deal with gestures to organize or “get rid” of emails. Although Apple already has this in iOS's native Mail, Spark seems to have hit the right measure of how much to drag right or left to organize the mailbox. Without having to open the message, dragging it from left to right you can already mark it as read or if you drag a little bit further to the right you can choose to archive it; already in the opposite direction (from right to left), you have the options pin (check) and delete (delete). Just with these j d to do a good clean in emails.

The highlights do not stop there: when writing an email for the first time, several super-objective tips appear to make your day-to-day easier. For example, you can compose an email to one person and then immediately type “CC:” or “BCC:” to send the same email with a copy (hidden) to another person in an interesting way to have a better use of the screen, focusing on necessary and leaving it cleaner.

Spark identifies the email signatures you use the most and organizes them in a way that you can choose which one to use to compose the end of the email. In my case, I always write “MDC” (initials of my name) and it automatically identifies and asks if I would like to use this as a signature.

Attaching files to emails deserves another compliment, because in addition to photos Spark allows you to attach files from the following sources: camera, albums, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive and iCloud Drive. With the increasing trend of files in the cloud, this can help a lot to save space on your phone.

Going back a bit to reading emails, when entering an unread message, reading and leaving it, a feature that I found very interesting is a simple bar at the bottom that says: “Marked as read UNDO” ("Marked as read Undo"), very useful for when you enter the email and want to leave it as unread for later viewing. With a simple action, Spark saves a few taps on the screen.

All functions Smart (Smart), as they are defined by the app itself, can be activated and deactivated with a simple button at the top right of the app, giving it an appearance more like normal email clients. Messages that have multiple responses are grouped and are easily identified by a number on the right.

A feature that for now is only useful for those familiar with the English language is the search for emails using expressions like “Message to Rafael with PDF” or “Message from Eduardo with Agenda of the Week”. Being repetitive with the phrase, but another highlight for three simple “buttons” to answer emails quickly with the options: Like (to flag messages you liked / liked), Thanks (to say thank you quickly) and a Smile (to smile at the content of that message).

When writing an email, a well-explored feature was the option of being able to minimize the current message you are writing and search for content in another email or even write a new one in parallel, but the explored form was a minimized floating version in front of the Another content that you are working on, you can place this minimized version wherever you want on the screen, so that it will be less disturbing.

With a calendar integrated into the app itself, it is easy to accept or decline meetings, demonstrating possible scheduling conflicts before accepting invitations. However, the feature is still quite simple it could do a little more, but because it was launched now it is certainly only a matter of time.

Spark “came out ahead” of Apple, if we can say so, in terms of Apple Watch. With a very smart interface to see how many and what types of emails you have, it is still possible to reply to emails with the smart buttons I mentioned above. When you are in a meeting or in a situation that is bad to pull your phone, it ends up being perfect. The native Mail of the watch does not currently allow replying anything.

The new Readdle customer does not yet have versions for iPad or Mac and does not even support landscape mode (landscape) for the iPhone 6 Plus, but as I said before I think it is a matter of time. Enjoy it for free and test it also at first it has surprised me, share below your opinions.