New Y! Mobile Mail Service

Yesterday, Yahoo! released a new version of their mobile mail service. The new service includes a downloadable client, push mail, and is priced at $2.99 per month.

I tested the service on my Treo 650 with Sprint.

Pros:
- Fast, responsive UI, at least on my Treo
- Sync worked well
- Messages deleted on the device are deleted on the server

Cons:
- Doesn't automatically remove extra lines from email messages, forcing me to scroll through empty space
- Can't move messages to folders which effectively means I can only read my mail, and not manage my mail
- Push didn't seem to work reliably

Overall, I'll stick with Chatteremail and my hosted Microsoft Exchange mailbox from 1and1.

But this little test did make me realize that Yahoo's mobile product suite today is really a disconnected set of tools and technologies. The mobile mail client, the WAP front-end and photos are not well integrated with my PC experience.

It's hard to see how and when Yahoo will pull all of the information they already know about me (Mail, My, Local, etc.) into the experience I really want on my mobile device. On my mobile device, personalization, preferences and profile information is more useful and more important than on my PC, yet Yahoo doesn't make good use of the information.

I may have to revise my MVNO/Yahoo prediction to 10 years.