Give Thunderbird for Android a "send later" function

[52fighters]

The "send later" function is in a LOT of Android email programs. It is a part of basic functionality. Thunderbird for Android needs it too.

[Jon]

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[Cycloneblaze]

I think this would be a bit difficult, because something needs to be online to actualy send the message when you scheduled it. Gmail and Outlook can do this because they control the mail servers as well as the client, so you can request a scheduled email and the server will take care of sending it for you. Most mail servers don't support this. Thunderbird only controls the client, and it allows you to use email accounts with arbitrary servers, so it can't know if asking the server to schedule the email will actually do anything.

You could have the Thunderbird client (app) take care of sending the email, silently in the background at the time you requested. The main problem I see is that if your phone was turned off or not connected to the internet, the send would fail until you got back online. It might be difficult to communicate that to users; you could use a notification, but a lot of the time the user wouldn't be actually looking at their phone at the send time, because they think they don't need to be - the email was "already" sent.

Anyone else know of other general-purpose Android email apps which have this feature and how they make it work? Do the Gmail or Outlook apps support it for non-Gmail or Outlook email accounts, or just their own?