The iPhone’s email client is solid. It’s got a good interface, works incredibly smoothly (just sync the iPhone during set up and everything you need is in place, automatically), and keeps me in all the touch I need when I’m away from my computer. Though I doubt I’m ever going to write a thousand-word email using the onscreen keyboard, it’s great for quick notes or action items.

But, after having used the iPhone for close to three weeks, I have a question about and a few requests for revisions to the iPhone’s email client.

How, Exactly, Does Checking Work?
I know this shouldn’t be a question, exactly. The iPhone is supposed to check the same email accounts that I have set up on my computer, using the same protocol.

The two most common protocols for checking email are POP3 and IMAP. The most important difference for our purposes here is that IMAP leaves messages on the server until the user deletes them. This is especially important when you have two devices checking the same email account — if you don’t use this option, it’s possible that only one device will download the email, rather than both. For that reason, the Yahoo accounts that are tied to the iPhone are IMAP accounts.

But none of my email accounts use IMAP. They’re all POP3. And yet I get all my mail on both my computer and iPhone. I think this is a result of a setting in my desktop email program that causes my accounts to act like IMAP accounts — they leave a copy of the email on the server for 7 days, meaning that the iPhone will always be able to get that mail.

Seems straightforward enough. Except. Sometimes I get mail on my iPhone that doesn’t show up on my desktop. Weird. If anyone had any insight into why that might happen, I’d love to hear from you.

Feature Requests
After having spent a decent amount of time with the email program, there are two features I’d like to see added to later versions of the program.

Mark As Read
Desktop email program have options that let you mark an email as read, whether you’ve really read it or not, so as to get rid of that “you’ve got mail” type icon. We don’t have that on the iPhone, but I wish we did. It’s annoying to have to open every email on the iPhone in order to mark it as read. Just getting to mark the mail as read and no longer new with a couple of button taps would be great.

Better Antispam Tools
My desktop antispam tools are solid. Most spam ends up in the Trash folder, but some still gets through to my inbox. I can get around this spam by creating rules that automatically delete emails that match certain spam profiles. But there are no such options on the iPhone. And that means that the spam that would go into my desktop inbox and then automatically gets deleted always goes to my iPhone. This means I see more spam there than I do on my desktop. I’d like to be able to sync with email program spam rules to the iPhone email program to avoid this.