Stupid Email App Design (Android)

I just encountered, for the umpteenth time, what is probably the single stupidest design decision I have ever encountered in the history of email applications. With the default Android email app, it is impossible to change the IMAP or POP3 username once the account is created. You can change everything else, including the username for SMTP, but not the username for incoming mail. The only way to change the username for incoming mail is to delete and recreate the email account, which is something you don’t want to do if you are using POP3 and storing email on the phone

Of course, you may be wondering why this is an issue? After all, usernames don’t change, do they? Wrong. There are two cases where usernames change:

1. You change email providers. That doesn’t always mean your email address changes since you may be changing the hosting for a domain. In that case, username required to log in to the new mail server might change.

2. Your email host changes the way it operates its email server and that changes the login format required. For instance, going from requiring “username” to requiring “username@domain”.

These two things happen more often than most people realize.

So, by the collected powers of the universe, good, evil, and neutral, fix the <bleeeeeeeeeeeep> default Android email app to allow changing the <bleep> username for incoming mail!

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