As great a device that the BlackBerry is for sending and receiving email one thing I haven’t figured out is why RIM has yet to add HTML formatted email support to the BlackBerry. Fortunately, the folks over BlackBerrySmart have got you covered with BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3.

BBSmart Email Viewer, as its name implies, is a BlackBerry email viewing application that allows you to view HTML formated email with support for graphics. As I have found out over the last week, however, BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3 is much, much more.


Installation and Configuration
Installing and configuring BBSmart Email Viewer is pretty straight forward. There are separate downloads for BlackBerry OS 4.2 devices, 4.1 devices, and everything else. Select the appropriate link for your OS and download BBSmart Email Viewer OTA to your device.

Once BBSmart Email Viewer is installed, you will need to reboot your BlackBerry. Configuration is just as simple as installation. Once you BlackBerry comes back up you will see BBSmart Options in your Email menu. From here you can set email display options such as “Set as Default Email Viewer”, “Display Images in Email”, and others.

There are also menus for Email Header Display Options, Email Text Display Options, Connection, Cache, and PIM Options.

Usability
BBSmart Email Viewer has some really cool features. The PIM integration allows you to to convert emails directly into calendar appointments and / or tasks. There is also an email template feature called SmartSay that allows you to save commonly used text that as a signature of sorts that you can apply to your outgoing emails. There are currently 3 templates save which you can modify to your liking as well as create new ones from scratch.

Final Verdict
All in all, BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3, is a really cool application that eliminates the nightmare of trying to read HTML formatted email natively on your BlackBerry. The only real knock that I have is that BBSmart is a bit slow when set as your default email viewer.

I would suggest defaulting your email view to the BlackBerrys regular view and using BBSmart view only when you need to parse an HTML formatted message. Other than that BBSmart Email Viewer v2.3 is an excellent application for you BlackBerry.

You can download a trial here