Yahoo Mail review

This week we're going to be taking a deep dive into some of Yahoo's Android apps. Sure, Google trounced them in search in the early days, but Yahoo has managed to stick through it with a couple of bruises.

As it turns out, Yahoo has some pretty great apps. First and foremost, Yahoo Mail delivers some extremely sharp visuals thanks in no small part to the strong theme support. While looking through the inbox and other e-mail views, the background is blurred out, but as soon as you pop into a menu, you get a striking wallpaper and assigns a complementary highlight color through the rest of the interface. A similar set-up is available on the web, but unfortunately the two don't sync. Besides that, the icon set is flat and minimal, just the way we like it, and transition animations are smooth.

Yahoo Mail smartly bundles in some of their other services within the app, including a news reader, web search, local weather forecast, sports scores, interesting videos and images via Flickr. It's neat having these all included without having to download additional apps, but it's worth mentioning that the services may be location-locked. The version I downloaded here in Canada didn't include any of these extra functions.

Yahoo Mail for Android

All of the core tasks remain in Yahoo Mail, like adding attachments, selecting multiple messages, and swiping left and right through your messages. As for composing e-mails, rich text editing is available with bold, italic, underline, size, and color options available. There's also a shortcut for dropping in emoticons if you're into that kind of thing. For those that just can't let go of paper and ink, a printer button is handily available to shoot off e-mails to local or cloud printers, as well as saving e-mails as a PDF.

Yahoo Mail for Android

Elsewhere in the Android experience, you'll get notifications of new mail with a purple LED notification if your phone has one, and a refreshingly unobnoxious notification sound. Of course both can be turned off if desired. On the downside, the tray notifications don't have actionable buttons included; you'll have to actually dive into the e-mail to start replying or forwarding anything. Oddly there's no home screen widget available. Tablet support is solid, with two panes visible in landscape orientation and scaling down to one in portrait.

Yahoo Mail for Android

There are a few knocks against Yahoo mail. For one, there's an ad that stays sticky at the top of your inbox. This can be a dealbreaker for many. Pulling in your Gmail can be a bit of a hassle since you need to register the account through the web rather than the app, and even then, it's polling on POP rather than IMAP, which means one-way retrieval without sync. Basically the Yahoo mail app is only really viable if you're sticking with Yahoo mail accounts. That said, there is support for multiple Yahoo accounts if you're really gung-ho about the service. Finally, there isn't any support for labels, though you can still mark items with stars for future reference, and filters can be assigned on the web so certain messages get shunted directly to specific folders.

Good

  • Sharp interface with theme support
  • Helpful bundled services

Bad

  • Sticky ad at the top of inbox
  • No home screen widget

Bottom Line

Though Google loyalists won't have much use for the Yahoo Mail app, anyone settled with what Yahoo has to offer on the web will be happy they weren't entirely left in the dark on mobile.

Stick around, because the rest of this week we'll be digging into the other big-name Yahoo apps, like Flickr, News Digest, and Aviate.

Simon Sage
Simon has been covering mobile since before the first iPhone came out. After producing news articles, podcasts, review videos, and everything in between, he's now helping industry partners get the word about their latest products. Get in touch with him at simon@futurenet.com.
25 Comments
  • Just FYI, but there is a paid option to remove the ad. It used to be Yahoo Mail Plus, now it's the (unfortunately substantially more expensive) Ad Free Mail.
    https://help.yahoo.com/kb/yahoo-account/SLN15803.html?impressions=true
  • Who still uses Yahoo Mail? Gmail or die.
  • Old people stuck in the 90s. Posted via Android Central App
  • I thought the last yahoo mail survivor died in '92.
  • I'm not old and I still Yahoo. My Gmail account is just for all the spam Google sells and other sites I don't want to give my main account to. Posted via HTC One on Sprint
  • Yeah, I too still use Yahoo (Mail and Contacts) and use the newer Gmail account as my junk mail address. Hate Gmail threading of messages and I've always appreciated Yahoo Contact's Group organization feature, even if its not available from within the Android version of Yahoo Mail.
    As for the 'sticky' (read 'sponsored' or better, 'spam') ads in my Inbox, they are hateful and have nearly convinced me to go back to the stock Android Mail app, where these are stripped out. Igit rid of these ads via Add-ons on my computer's browser, but no such luck with this app.
  • spam google sells? huh? it's really easy to spam filter in gmail... just insert/remove periods within your email address, and then tell the spam places that email address.
  • You can actually do one better. Add a plus sign (+) to the end of your username and then you can put whatever you want afterward. GMail will ignore the plus sign and everything after it. So you can put the company's name after the plus sign to see where it came from.
    For example:
    username+amazon@gmail.com
    username+groupon@gmail.com
    username+randomwebsite@gmail.com
  • I'm 32 and I use Yahoo mail, though I did open it long before Gmail ever existed. For some reason I never found a need to get rid of it, the service has stayed relatively current and spam filtering has thankfully gotten much much better (nearly as good as Gmail over the last couple years I'd say, false positives are probably a bigger issue than spam in my inbox at this point). I use my Gmail account for personal stuff and my Yahoo account for all my website/forum registrations as well as online shopping etc. Old habit I created when I first started using Gmail, it's worked out nicely and it gives me some degree of redundancy IMO. I've been using IMAP sync for a while tho, no clue about the app, might try it again after reading Simon's review.
  • My wife's uses Yahoo, she not old. "The world would be so boring without idiots like you to amuse me."
  • I prefer outlook.com for email it just looks better to me personally plus @outlook.com seems the most professional out of all the free services.
  • Yahoo=SPAM Posted via Android Central App
  • Seriously, it is insane the spam they can't seem to control. I'm in the process of moving away from them right now. Goodbye rocketmail email, my first ever email account. *cries*
  • Really? 281 million people use Yahoo mail. Sure that's less than Gmail. But discount Yahoo mail as a strong contender to Gmail. Posted via Android Central App
  • Wow, did not notice I could swipe to the right for news, and all that other good stuff. LOL (Thank you) and yes I'm serious. Did not know. Pretty cool! I use Yahoo and Gmail. Good stuff Posted via Android Central App
  • Thanks for mentioning what those 2 icons are for up in the top right corner - I've been using Yahoo Mail app for years and this is the first time I noticed this (even though it is probably a new feature, I check this app multiple times a day and just noticed it today). A couple of things not mentioned:
    A problem I have with this app that I never run in to with my Gmail app is that occasionally it will stop working and I'll have to log in again.
    Also it's annoying that when I check my Yahoo mail on the web or another device, it doesn't automatically remove the notification icon and flashing light from my phone like Gmail does.
    The main reason I use it is because on my phone (GS3) it provides a different tone and notification color (purple) when I get a Yahoo email vs. my normal Gmail notifications. I use my Yahoo mail as more of a spam/unimportant stuff account.
    Also this app is more laggy than Gmail, which is annoying.
  • Most of the times laggy, especially since it was updated to include stuff like theme selection, integration with news and weather etc. Sometimes it shows log in expired, it doesn't automatically sign in back after I went out to area with poor signal coverage. Most of the times I need to click twice or three times to delete an email even though I'm connected to wifi with good/strong signal. I miss the old Yahoo Mail. Simple and it does its main job perfectly. No bells and whistles, just plain old reliable mobile email app. Stuck with this app coz I've been using my Yahoo email address for work since 2008. Gmail is definitely a lot better for me. Posted via Android Central App on Nexus 4
  • You forgot to mention how damn laggy and slow the app is. Used to be quick, now its attempt to be fancy has slowed it to a crawl. Posted via Android Central App
  • I have the app, but only to sync contact info for the few people I know still using Yahoo :)
  • I keep an Yahoo! account active as it's easier with fantasy football... else I'm mainly on gmail.
  • I have "identical" name accounts at gmail, outlook.com and yahoo.com, mostly as a "defense" against someone else using my name. Yahoo recently started spamming me with a "daily yahoo" that I don't want and didn't sign up for. I have "unsubscribed" but Yahoo says to allow "several days" to remove me. So I have marked them as Spam. The first day I had the yahoo address, my spam folder had 10 emails in it for a bunch of stuff, mostly sexually oriented. I don't see that at either the gmail or outlook addresses. Posted from my XT1080M
  • I didn't like the theme option. It just made feel cluttered for me. I prefer reading black text on a white background. I went back to my default email app for it.
  • I still use my Yahoo mail account as my main email account. It pre-dates my Gmail account by years. I also prefer the web interface and the mobile interface to Gmail. Posted via Android Central App
  • After months of frustration with the new version hogging all the resources on my Galaxy Tab I uninstalled it today. Previous version worked great but leave it up to a corporation to mess it up eventually.
  • Why would any normal human agree to the terms of the yahoo mail app. Agreeing to the terms gives yahoo permission to have complete control of all of ones email communication.It appears that they can read all mail and even stop a person from receiving their email. Go figure. This corporation will not get my info. I hope.