Mozilla has introduced a new email client for Android devices called K-9 Mail. The mobile application is being unveiled as part of Mozilla’s Thunderbird family of open-source desktop email and chat applications.
K-9 Mail is not a new launch. The source code of K-9 Mail was primarily published in the year 2008, and MZLA Technologies acquired it and its trademarks. It hired the open-source project maintainer of K-9 Mail as a full-time developer to improvise the application features and to enable a gradual transition to Thunderbird mobile.
MZLA Technologies, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, mentioned that it is presently evaluating the development of a K-9 email client, especially for iOS devices.
The development team for MZLA Technologies is planning to make improvements in the email feature set to resemble that of its Thunderbird desktop email client.
Some of the improvements include the pointers like account setup using Thunderbird account auto-configuration, folder management, support for message filters, and synchronization between desktop and mobile versions of Thunderbird, as mentioned by Mozilla. K-9 Mail is available for download via its various sites.
9 Mail Project Maintainer Christian Ketterer mentioned- Ultimately, K-9 Mail will revolutionize Thunderbird on Android once certain development milestones have been achieved, which align it closely with Thunderbird’s feature set and visual appearance. Christian Ketterer is well-known in the Mozilla open-source developer community as cketti.
Thunderbird contains 20 million active monthly users and is a free and open-source email, calendaring, newsfeed, and chat client across Windows, macOS, and Linux.
In the current scenario, Android mobile users have numerous email and chat options, like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, ProtonMail, and end-to-end encrypted email service.
In the initial stages, Thunderbird for Android will not support calendars, tasks, feeds, or chat like the desktop app, as written by cketti in a Q&A blog post. He also mentioned that the developer team would primarily work on “an amazing email experience,” and this has been named the best way to facilitate Thunderbird’s other functionality on Android. At present, the team is discussing- how best to achieve that.
For example, the first methodology will be handling the ability to use Thunderbird’s desktop email feature set is to simply sync calendars, and then users will be permitted to use their preferred calendar application on their device.
