Spark for Android review: a good alternative to Newton, Inbox and Co?
A TEST REPORT from David Haydl 
on April 04, 2019, 8:42 am | Write a comment
The Spark for Android beta has been around for about two weeks. The final version came to the Play Store two days ago. But how is it doing? My test should show that.
As many know, Google Inbox for Gmail buried two days ago. Readdle, the developers of Spark, took advantage of this and released the first version of the Android app on the same day. This includes some features that Inbox users have come to love. The app is available free of charge in the Play Store and can also be used without a subsequent subscription. Only the team features, which I will talk about in detail later, cost something. The mail client is also available for iOS and macOS, Readdle also calls the same prices here.
Home: Smart Inbox
When you open the app you land on the page called “Smart-Inbox”. There all mails in the inbox are divided into the sections “Private”, “Notifications”, “Newsletter” and “Read”. This is particularly helpful when processing your inbox systematically. If you want to see all new emails at a glance, the app developers built a separate page in the app where all new messages are listed at once - the whole thing is basically like a normal inbox.
Screenshot: TechnikNews
It bothered me that unread messages are only marked with a blue dot on the time. I would have liked this to be highlighted a little, since it is very difficult to see new mails like this at first glance.
Spark also offers a normal inbox (screenshot: TechnikNews)
Organization of mails
Spark offers a whole range of options and features for keeping your inbox clean.
The first feature that is used for this is the smart inbox, which I just explained briefly. As the name suggests, the emails are automatically divided into their own categories so that the user does not have to do anything and still finds a sorted inbox. So you can decide when to deal with important emails and when to deal with newsletters or similar things.
The pinned messages can be reached from all folders via the pin icon. I have found this feature to come in handy when I want to move a message to a folder and respond to it later.
Screenshot: TechnikNews
Then there is a reminder and a snooze function. These do exactly what the name would suggest. A reminder can be defined for each individual email so that you can be notified of this at a later point in time via a push notification. Snooze hides a selected message until a desired time so that it then appears again in the inbox. Of course, it is also possible for messages to be sent at a preferred time.
Customizable swipe gestures for the inbox and a customizable sidebar are also on board.
Personally, what I liked most was that all settings and inboxes are synced with the Spark account, so you just have to enter an email address and password to pick up where you left off on another device.
I liked the synchronization with the Spark account very much (screenshot: TechnikNews)
Translation into German not yet perfect
When the beta version of the app appeared, the client could only be used in English; the German translation was submitted over time. And even if this is largely very good, it is unfortunately not perfect. A little further up I wrote about the snooze feature, which is called “follow-up” in the app. Can cause confusion for some, because I thought at first that you can store test templates for e-mails here. Well, I guess I was wrong about that.
Other things worth mentioning
Then there are two things that struck me as very positive and that I still want to get rid of.
Spark handles signatures like no other mail app I know of. If you type in your signature at the end of a mail, you can remove it from the message using a button. Another signature can also be selected via a context menu. Then I liked the fact that you were given the choice of opening links in an in-app browser or in the browser of your choice.
The management of the signatures is very intuitive (screenshot: TechnikNews)
Conclusion
Spark is an app that doesn't have to hide from big names like Newton or the Inbox. With features such as the Smart Inbox, the Readdle mail client offers convenient options for managing your own emails. In addition, this is free if you don't use the team features, and still offers many powerful functions - this cannot be said of every mail app in the Google Play Store. I will not switch (for the time being) myself, as I have come to appreciate Newton's cross-platform user experience very much.
I have two improvement requests and one feature request for the developers. I would appreciate it if unread items are highlighted more clearly and that "resubmission" is changed to a more appropriate designation that causes less confusion. When it comes to features, I can be brief: Dark mode!