I really like the email program on the Palm Pre. It has the unified inbox option so you can see all your messages in one list. The folder listing is also very nice with finger-friendly collapsible buttons. It also supports IMAP IDLE (Push IMAP), which I like a lot. Another great but minor feature is that it syncs reply/forward status on emails. So if you replied to a message on your desktop, the reply icon shows up on the Palm Pre. This is something I’ve missed in Windows Mobile and all other mobile platforms for a long time. Unfortunately the reply status syncing doesn’t seem to work with my Exchange server, although Windows Mobile 6.5 will support reply status syncing on Exchange 2007. Actually, the Pre has a bit of a bug with the reply status syncing. When you reply to an email message from the Pre, it actually applies the “Replied” tag to the message that you sent NOT the message you replied to. So you’ll have a bunch of emails in your sent folder with reply icons on them.

I also love that the emails on the Palm Pre show the contact photo of the person that sent them. This is obviously copied from Windows Mobile and it looks great. The Pre also supports multi-touch zooming in open emails, though I’ve never really cared about that since the text is generally readable as is. I suppose this is better for those horrendous emails that include a whole web page which I would never read anyway.

Another thing copied from Windows Mobile is the ability to choose which email account you use to reply to emails. Just tap the From field in a new message and you can switch accounts very easily. Unfortunately, newer versions of Windows Mobile have removed that feature (just as they have removed Push IMAP).

The email program’s user interface is extremely basic. You’ve got a few icons that you can see and a hidden menu and that’s it. Advanced options are a bit difficult to find or just plain absent. Where’s the spell check?

I miss the autosearch for email lists in Windows Mobile. The Palm Pre has no way of filtering through email lists based on search terms. The “Universal Search” feature also does not search emails. (It’s not really universal at all.) There’s no obvious way to select multiple messages in order to delete them and there aren’t any keyboard shortcuts for frequently used functions. In fact, the swipe-left/right-to-delete feature in the message list is horrible. There’s no undo, no confirmation, and messages deleted this way don’t go to your Trash or Deleted Items folders! If I accidentally swipe my finger to the left or right in a message list (maybe to clean the screen so I can see it better), then that message is gone forever. Even on my desktop, “Undelete” is not available.

I received a few emails where I wanted to view their attachments. One had a number of WMV videos attached. On Windows Mobile, these are easily downloaded and played in the Media Player. No can do on the Pre. Then I got a voice mail from work, which gets sent to me as a WAV file (as do voice mails from my home phone line). Again, Windows Mobile has no problem playing those, but the Palm Pre just isn’t capable of handling that type of attachment.

As for files that I can attach to emails? There’s a nice interface for selecting pictures, videos, music, or other files. There is no file manager on the device though, so you can’t really organize any of the files the way you might want to. When did not being able to manage your files become a feature?

Regardless, I’m not entirely sure how to feel about the email program on the Pre. There are a lot of great features, including ones that Windows Mobile has actually removed from previous versions, but there are a number of annoyances as well.