Mozilla bought the rights to K-9 Mail with the intention of eventually turning it into the Android version of Thunderbird. Now, it looks like the bulk of those efforts is finally here, and you can try out an initial version of Thunderbird on Android at long last.
The Thunderbird email client is finally spreading its wings on Android, two years after the initial announcement, in a beta stage at least. A beta version is now available for eager users to test and provide feedback. The team now wants people to try out the app by themselves and give them feedback so a full-fledged stable version can be released in the future.
The beta version allows users to test core functionalities like account setup (both automatic and manual), message reading and fetching, account switching, email organization, notifications, composing and sending emails, and basic email actions. One important thing here is that Mozilla has added an option to switch from K-9 Mail, the app upon which Thunderbird for Android is built. This means that once the app is released, it will likely not be a replacement to the K-9 Mail app. Rather, it will function as a completely separate app that you’ll need to migrate to once it’s out, if you used K-9 Mail in the past.
If you would like to give it a spin by yourself, you can report your experiences and report bugs on the Thunderbird for Android beta mailing list. A dedicated Matrix channel is also available for real-time discussions with other testers and contributors. We don’t know when the app will be properly released, but since it’s taken two years from announcement to an actual beta, we wouldn’t be surprised to see this take a few more months until everyone can use it.
You can download Thunderbird Beta on the Google Play Store, or get the latest pre-release version from the Github Releases page.
Source: Thunderbird
