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Welcome to Spark, the new email app from the team that brought you fine apps such as Scanner Pro and Printer Pro.
Spark makes it easy to work through your inbox faster than ever before. No matter if it’s one new message or hundreds, you can do it in a couple of minutes. Spark Integrates with major cloud services to make your email experience better and frictionless (Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Pocket, Instapaper, etc. – you can even connect two accounts for one service).
Here are more reasons why Spark is Unique:
Setup
Setting up the Spark app is no more complicated than entering in your login credentials. Upon first launch, the user is greeted with a welcome screen that gives the option to take a feature-based tutorial of the Spark app or, conversely, start immediately setting up your account.
Account creation itself is a breeze as Readdle seems to have taken a page form Apple’s playbook. Setting up two Gmail accounts required nothing more than a username and password and a code for 2-step verification. From there, all of my email began to sync down to the iPhone and was automatically categorized (more on that below) for easy viewing and processing.
User Interface
In regards to the user interface, the Spark app presents a clean and organized look that conceals an email productivity powerhouse. The Smart Inbox feature sorts email based not only on date and time received, but the relative importance of the message itself. New emails are displayed at the top while email that you’ve read is moved into the “inbox” section below. The app intuitively knows which messages are important based from the frequency of emails that have been exchanged between your account and that of the third party – which makes for a less intrusive, and more sane, email experience.
Spark is clever when it comes to categorization. It knows how to sort email based on the sender, and upon first use, your email will be logically categorized into “personal”, “newsletter” and “notification” boxes for easy processing. What’s more, Spark recognizes and prioritizes authentic email, putting messages from real people up top to where they have your attention.
Managing email with Spark is simple with gesture based swipes that execute commands such as archive, delete, pin and snooze – so you can get to inbox zero in less time and with less fuss than ever before. Moreover, all of the gestures are customizable which allows for left or right-handed use.
Emails that have been read, or have otherwise had some action applied to them, will either be moved to the archives, or the a separate “general inbox” section below the new emails. This a simple and intuitive way to know what needs your attention and what you’ve already dealt with.
Lastly, Spark shines when it comes to the amount of customization you’re able to apply to fully manage your email experience within the app. One such customization is the addition of widgets like a calendar or smart folders. Widgets help to minimize the amount of time a user spends hunting for a particular piece information by providing it at their finger tips. Widgets can be accessed by tapping the circle icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and then choosing the widget you’d like to see.
Thoughts
Upon first playing with Spark, I liked how quickly the gesture based actions allowed me to process through my inbox until I was, at long last, at inbox zero! For me, that’s quite an accomplishment. I also really like quick replies – a handy set of pre-typed messages that I can send with one tap on the screen. Quick replies come in handy when I want to let someone know that I’ve received their email or quickly say thanks – all I need to do is tap “Got it” or “Thanks” and Spark takes care of the rest.
A well implemented feature is read receipts. Spark makes it easy to know when your recipients have opened your messages by sending you a quick notification when the message has been read. Of course, this feature is completely optional, but I think it really helps with email management.
While there are a lot of great features in Spark, as of right now, there exists one big area for improvement – and that’s email readability. The thing is, when I open a new email it Spark, it loads very quickly, but the email displayed at when can only be thought of as a birds eye view – in which the text is small and somewhat hard to read. In order to drill down into the content of the message, I found myself having to try multiple strategies for zooming into the body of the email – and no, pinch to zoom does not work in Spark, at least not very well. It would be more beneficial for Spark to open an email and display it more zoomed into the message of the email, vs the birds eye view.
Conclusion
Overall, the Readlle team did a fantastic job of crafting a superb email management application that will help us win the battle against the constant influx of email. With many unique features, Spark is poised to become a a key player in the email game.
Download Spark now for free from the App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id997102246?mt=8
For more info on Spark, visit the official Website here: http://readdle.com/spark
