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The main feature of the Android app is push notifications, which requires Google Play Services. A version of the app without push notifications is pretty much i

The main feature of the Android app is push notifications, which requires Google Play Services. A version of the app without push notifications is pretty much identical to just using the regular web app in Chrome Android, so there didn't seem to be a lot of point doing distribution via other means (with the extra maintenance overhead that brings). If there's enough demand for something else then we'll be happy to revisit this.

bruce_one 12y ago
That's a pretty excellent reason :-p It's no stress, as the web client is excellent - was just partly wondering whether it had been considered :-)
bad_user 12y ago
That's odd. I remember the K9 email client working on a phone with CyanogenMod and without Google Play or the other Google services and I was getting notifications on new emails. Maybe my memory is failing me. But what are Android apps that are published on Amazon's Appstore or on F-Droid doing for push notifications? Also, what about offline access? Is the Android app functional in offline mode? I don't know how many people are using Androids without Google Play on it, but those of us that do use Android without Google Play would appreciate a version installable from somewhere else. If you've got the resources that is, no pressure :-) And as a suggestion, given that this is just a packaged web interface, it would be awesome to see it published for Firefox Mobile / Firefox OS. They apparently do expose an API for push notifications for example - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Simple_Push_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Simple_Push...
- robn_fastmail 12y ago
  > That's odd. I remember the K9 email client working on a phone with CyanogenMod and without Google Play or the other Google services and I was getting notifications on new emails. On Android platform notifications and push notifications are different things. Any app can drop a notification into the notification area, and that's what most mail clients do in response to IMAP traffic. A push notification is a small chunk of data sent by a server to Google's push channel with a target device/app identifier, which Google then sends on to the device. The target application wakes up and receives the data, and can do whatever it likes in response (or nothing at all). The FastMail app responds to pushes by calling back to the FastMail servers to find out what changed and update the platform notification accordingly). Without the push channel, there's nothing that can trigger this, so you don't get notifications. We could wake up and poll regularly, but that's going to be pretty horrible for your battery. There are other push channels around (eg Amazon have one) but they have different interfaces and its not at all clear there's enough demand to make it worth the time and effort to develop, test and maintain. Until then, the app without notification support is almost identical to the regular web app in Firefox or Chrome, so you might as well just use it that way. > And as a suggestion, given that this is just a packaged web interface, it would be awesome to see it published for Firefox Mobile / Firefox OS. I did look into it briefly, mostly to make sure we weren't making any architectural choices that would prevent it in the future. Right now though there's basically no demand for Firefox OS. If it becomes worth the time and effort to do it, we'll reconsider it.
kybernetikos 12y ago
I am on fastmail and use android without Google Play Services (and would think that a significant proportion of your customers have moved to you from gmail because they care about things that might lead them to avoid google play services). Having said that, I'm happy enough using an IMAP mail client. I would have been much more excited to have good calendar and contacts synchronization with my phone. Please don't make those dependent on google services too.

bruce_one 12y ago

That's a pretty excellent reason :-p It's no stress, as the web client is excellent - was just partly wondering whether it had been considered :-)

bad_user 12y ago

That's odd. I remember the K9 email client working on a phone with CyanogenMod and without Google Play or the other Google services and I was getting notifications on new emails. Maybe my memory is failing me. But what are Android apps that are published on Amazon's Appstore or on F-Droid doing for push notifications? Also, what about offline access? Is the Android app functional in offline mode? I don't know how many people are using Androids without Google Play on it, but those of us that do use Android without Google Play would appreciate a version installable from somewhere else. If you've got the resources that is, no pressure :-) And as a suggestion, given that this is just a packaged web interface, it would be awesome to see it published for Firefox Mobile / Firefox OS. They apparently do expose an API for push notifications for example - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Simple_Push_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Simple_Push...

robn_fastmail 12y ago
> That's odd. I remember the K9 email client working on a phone with CyanogenMod and without Google Play or the other Google services and I was getting notifications on new emails. On Android platform notifications and push notifications are different things. Any app can drop a notification into the notification area, and that's what most mail clients do in response to IMAP traffic. A push notification is a small chunk of data sent by a server to Google's push channel with a target device/app identifier, which Google then sends on to the device. The target application wakes up and receives the data, and can do whatever it likes in response (or nothing at all). The FastMail app responds to pushes by calling back to the FastMail servers to find out what changed and update the platform notification accordingly). Without the push channel, there's nothing that can trigger this, so you don't get notifications. We could wake up and poll regularly, but that's going to be pretty horrible for your battery. There are other push channels around (eg Amazon have one) but they have different interfaces and its not at all clear there's enough demand to make it worth the time and effort to develop, test and maintain. Until then, the app without notification support is almost identical to the regular web app in Firefox or Chrome, so you might as well just use it that way. > And as a suggestion, given that this is just a packaged web interface, it would be awesome to see it published for Firefox Mobile / Firefox OS. I did look into it briefly, mostly to make sure we weren't making any architectural choices that would prevent it in the future. Right now though there's basically no demand for Firefox OS. If it becomes worth the time and effort to do it, we'll reconsider it.

kybernetikos 12y ago

I am on fastmail and use android without Google Play Services (and would think that a significant proportion of your customers have moved to you from gmail because they care about things that might lead them to avoid google play services). Having said that, I'm happy enough using an IMAP mail client. I would have been much more excited to have good calendar and contacts synchronization with my phone. Please don't make those dependent on google services too.