Newton Mail: The Perfect Email App?
Newton Mail, formally CloudMagic, might just be the best email app I’ve ever tried. I use Inbox by Google for my personal email, and I love it. Sadly, Inbox doesn’t support SMTP for adding custom emails (such as my @thetech.ninja email). I tried the default Samsung bloatware email app that came on my phone, but it’s just unintuitive. In addition, it doesn’t offer a consistent experience on my iPad. For my iPad, I tried the default Mail app, but it’s just so bland and boring. I kept searching, and I’ve found the perfect solution.
Features
Newton Mail has common features you would expect, such as a conversation style view for emails, gestures to swipe to delete, file, or archive, and some premium features (more on that later). Newton Mail has one main feature that makes it an email killer: it’s available on iOS and Android, and you sign up for a Newton Mail account to sync your email preferences and logins in the cloud. This is great, because any time you get a new device or format an existing device, you just download the app and sign in, and you’re ready to go – no additional setup required!
The (Overpriced) Premium Features
For a hefty $49.99 annual fee, you can get access to read receipts, snooze, sender profile, send later, and undo send. While these are certainly neat features, it’s definitely not worth the price in my opinion. In edition, Google’s Inbox, which I use for my personal email, offers much of the same features for free. I need to get something straight: there is still a free usable version of this app. Many people were angered (and rightly so) when CloudMagic “magically” (pun intended) transformed into Newton and offered these premium features.I was slightly confused during my trial as to if paying was mandatory, so I emailed Newton support to confirm. You do not have to pay to use this app. These are additional features that are totally optional. Newton forces the 14-day free trial on you, but the free version of the app is totally usable.
Design
The design is great on Android, and.. Interesting on iOS. Newton Mail has opted to go with a Material Design interface for Android, and a different design for iOS. This is slightly annoying, because it’s not a consistent interface across platforms. It’s really pretty on Android, and sort of bland on iOS. I’m biased to Android, as Android is my main driver, but I definitely think the iOS interface is decent, it just needs a bit of work. Below, you will see the iOS version (right), compared to the Android version (left). You can see the differences in design.
Is This the Perfect Email App?
Newton Mail is one of my favorite email apps I’ve ever used. It’s my second choice behind Inbox by Google. The interface is only part of the reason I love it, with the main reason being the cloud syncing. This could be a security concern, though, as they are technically storing the password to your email on their servers. I trust them though, and the concept is no different than something like LastPass.