Sunday, April 3, 2011

Software flaw renders Gmail app utterly useless

The native Gmail app on Sony Ericsson's Xperia X8, with Android 2.1, update 1, exhibits a serious software flaw.

The native Gmail app displays emails in 'conversations'. But due to the software flaw, sent emails are split up in many fragments, each fragment being displayed as a message in the conversation. Thus, a conversation of only four messages, is displayed as a conversation of  11 messages (see example), or even more.

This flaw renders the Gmail app utterly useless.

Until today, Sony Ericsson remain silent about this issue, and Google only provides updated versions of its Gmail app for smartphones with Android versions 2.2 and higher.

The Gmail web app is no real alternative to the native app, as it does not allow offline email reading and writing.

The Sony Ericsson E-mail app is not an alternative either, as it lags far behind the Gmail app in versatility.

The Gmail app is an important element of an Android smartphone, and because it concerns a native app, i.e., built into the Android 2.1 operating system, Sony Ericsson (and Google?) cannot ignore the problem, as it must affect their entire Xperia X8 customer base.

The software flaw is explained in detail on this dedicated page.

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