Feature Article

Free eNews Subscription>>
February 15, 2017

Yahoo! Revamps Mail App to Win Back Users

The past year for Yahoo! has been pretty rough. When the news first came that the company was going to be taken over by Verizon, people were unsure whether or not this was a good move for users or not. Then, a few months later, news of a major Yahoo! hack came out, quickly lowering the company’s value and putting Verizon’s interest in question. Since then, there have been allegations of a state-sponsored hack, and the company even made plans to change its name after the Verizon acquisition in an attempt to save face. Clearly, being on the Yahoo! team over the past year has been a bit of a struggle, and the company’s user base has undoubtedly dropped.

Despite all of these problems, Yahoo! is trying to bring interest back to its offering once again. Anyone who still uses a Yahoo! email address (myself included) has likely gotten a pop-up or two on their phone over the years about downloading the Yahoo! Mail mobile app. If you’re anything like me, you ignore these pop-ups because it’s much easier to just use the Mail app that comes with your phone. That way, all your emails are conveniently in one place. I’m guessing that when it comes to the Yahoo! Mail app, the majority of people have the same opinion as me, which is why the company is working to make it more appealing to users.

Thanks to some new updates, the app will do much more than simply deliver your mail; it will also sync your phone’s photos to your desktop and help you identify phone numbers with a new Caller ID feature. The Caller ID feature could actually be pretty helpful—it works by cross referencing incoming phone calls with the telephone numbers found in your email inbox. According to Yahoo!, most people have hundreds of phone numbers in their inboxes thanks to email signatures and other references. With the new update, the Yahoo! Mail app will quickly go through your emails, and then display the caller’s name if possible.

The new feature I’m personally most excited about, and I think many would agree with me, is the photo sync option. Anyone who’s ever tried to email themselves photos from their iPhone to save on their desktop knows how difficult this simple task can prove to be. Individually adding each photo, one by one, to an email is incredibly tedious. To solve this problem, the update integrates a new Yahoo! photo and video sharing platform called “Tripod” into the mail app. Essentially, your Camera Roll will now be available to you from the Yahoo! Mail app due to a background upload. Only you can access the photos, and looking through them is easy thanks to keyword search capabilities. These photos can be easily saved onto your desktop in their original size for screenshots and 1600px for all other images.

These updates may be small, but they’re certainly useful. If you’re tired of receiving calls from unknown numbers or need a better way to transfer photos from mobile to desktop, then the Yahoo! Mail app may be the solution you’ve been looking for. It’ll be interesting to see if these new features have an impact on Yahoo!’s user numbers. 




Edited by Stefania Viscusi


FOLLOW MobilityTechzone

Subscribe to MobilityTechzone eNews

MobilityTechzone eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the Wireless industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter