A pet peeve for many iPhone owners is that the native Mail app Apple includes does not allow for typing in landscape mode where the keyboard is bigger and more usable.

wideemailapp.png

Four different apps are now available that attempts to solve this issue. They all work basically the same way. I tested two of them.

To send an email you launch the third party app, type your email and click a button to sent it to your Mail app. Open mail and finish sending the email.

To reply (or reply all) to emails in Mail, first choose “reply” from within Mail. After the compose window comes up, quit Mail by pressing the home key. Then simply open Wide Email and write your reply in a new draft (make sure the subject line is empty). When you tap “Send to Mail”, your message will be inserted into the reply email, ready to send.

This is certainly not the best solution, but the only one if you want to have a landscape keyboard for typing mail. Might be well worth it to you if you email a lot.

I only tried the TouchType and Wide Email, but they are all similar in operation. I likes Wide Email the because it had the most functionality and a clean looking interface.

TouchType, $0.99 – works ok and has a decent price, but not as functional as Wide Email or Sideways.

Wide Email, $0.99 – this one offers a Subject Line that is missing in the others leaving you with no way to fill in the subject line in the app causing you to have to do this in Mail. Also Wide Email keeps copies of drafts. This is good for safety, but also good if you want to use one of them as a template! Very clean looking interface and not as cluttered as Sideways.

Sideways, $1.99 – this one has a trash button. Saves text between launches, but does not seem to have a draft library like Wide Email does. Developer claims to be adding the ability to send text to Twitter and possible other services.

Compose, $4.99 – seems to be most basic and most expensive. Does the same thing as TouchType with no additional features.

UPDATE: Another app that adds a landscape email to the iPhone has arrived. Big Keyboard Email, $0.99 – looks like a nice additional to this list as it supports font size, special charaters and International keyboard support. Also has Subject line.

These apps may be worth the small amount they cost for some users that want a landscape mode for email. We never know when Apple will add this natively. This is true however of many apps in the App Store.

I am using Wide Email on my iPhone and it does speed my typing on emails.

 Email Post Email Post  Print Post Print Post | Tags: , ,