First look: ibisMail for iPhone – like Mail with performance enhancing drugs

ibisMail is one of a number of apps that want to replace Apple’s own Mail app for the iPhone. Usually in these other apps, you just get a very simplistic app for e-mail whose only real feature is landscape typing. What sets ibisMail apart is that it has a ton more features than Apple’s app. Really… take a look!

Of course, what would a non Apple e-mail app be if it didn’t have landscape support. That’s given. But you can also create folders and apply rules for sorting. For instance, if I were running this app, I could set a rule to automatically file all e-mails sent from my editor in the trash. But I would never do that…would I?

There’s support for a different signature for each account (not sure why you can’t have numerous signatures for the same account). The app stores your most recent 1,000 messages per account, so you can really gauge how much spam you’re getting. It works with all the usuals—like POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP—along with tons of different authentication protocols. And it previews all of the same files that Mail will open.

Basically, it’s Mail, but with a lot more features. The only real problem I see with this app, other than the fact that you’ll have more than one app for e-mail on your iPhone (you can’t delete mail) is that it’s not out yet. It’s scheduled for March, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long. Still no word on pricing, but it won’t be free. While you’re waiting for March to rear it’s ugly head, here’s a video of the app in action.