So here it is November 2011 and I'm contemplating a crazy idea: Creating a native email app for the PlayBook. Crazy, because RIM is set to release their own native email app in three months.
The reason I'm thinking about doing it is that, first of all, it would be a fun challenge, second, I don't think it would take that long to create something simple but effective (40 hours?), and third, I like the idea of helping the PlayBook since I'm fond of the device, and maybe it would be an asset to the PlayBook to have native email functionality for the Christmas season. (And fourth, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the 2.0 release slipped a month or two, so it's conceivable that native email functionality won't arrive for another five months)
Would people value having native email now rather than a few months from now, or is this a silly idea?
Let me know what you think.
The features I'm thinking of targeting:
- IMAP/SMTP
- Storing messages locally
- Reading a message on the local device marks it read on the server and vice versa
- Send, Reply, Forward, Delete, Flag functionality
- Attachments
- Ability to view HTML emails, but only compose them as plain text
- Get notifications when you receive new mail (haven't looked into the API for this)
- Possibly a simple spell check
- Closely mimic the UI of the BlackBerry Bridge Email interface.
Daniel