Email

Unbeknownst to most, most 3rd party email apps store both emails as well as your email server credentials on their servers. I strongly prefer apps that don't do this for obvious reasons! Additionally, we use disposable email addresses (the only real solution to spam), and for that we need email aliases (identities). Here are our favorite android email clients:

Favorite: K-9 (website, and on GitHub): this has the most backwards UI among all of these programs, however, it has a lot of features - including support for multiple mailboxes AND aliases, and widgets that you can drop on your home screen that you can associate with a mailbox. And you can configure pretty much every aspect of this app. It's also open-source and it doesn't track you/analyze you/sell anything to you! There was a fork of it on GitHub with material design, unfortunately that project has been abandonned. So for now, this is what I (continue to) use!

FairEmail: also open-source and more refined than K-9, although still a bit clunky. You cannot drop separate widgets for each mailbox on your home screen. During use, it consumed ~5% of my battery when K-9 used around 0,3% (and not because the app was open).

Outlook Mobile: they used to store data on their servers but apparently they no longer store your credentials on their servers :-). As far as a client developed by a multinational, Outlook Mobile is actually a pretty good app. And it's free! Outlook is fine if you use Exchange, otherwise it has serious issues. For one, it's impossible to edit the settings for an existing IMAP/POP3 email account. Also, you can't set specific settings like port, encryption, etc. And in one isntance after a while it was simply no longer able to retrieve emails from an IMAP account, even though another app on the same phone (K-9) had no issues doing so.

Aqua Mail: very nice but costs $$. Supposedly secure and fits the above requirements, however reading through forum posts apparently many users have become dissatisfied after the original author sold the software to a company that quickly turned to monetizing the app. Unfortunately many a good software has gonet his route, so for now I am bumping this down the list!

Second favorite: Nine: similar to Aqua Mail, fits the bill but costs $. This is actually my favorite client except for one thing: it does not support email aliases. :-(

I sent a question to this end to the developer of Nine and I received a very detailed response in a few hours. Very impressive indeed! I am copying the email below, but in short the answer is that they are planning to add this feature and hopefully will have it out by early next year.

Emails with the developer of Nine:

Hi!
I would like to use multiple identities (aliases, a.k.a. disposable email addresses) with Nine with my IMAP email account. Is this possible?
I found a "workaround" in this thread: https://userforum.mailbox.org/topic/alias-mit-email-app-nine-verwenden :"I include the aliases I want to use as additional IMAP accounts and immediately disable the synchronization of emails for those accounts."
K-9 and AquaMail support such a feature. Do you?
Thanks,
Laszlo Lieszkovszky

Dear Lieszkovszky,
When it comes to the alias email address, Nine is now supported as a limited way. For example, only if the alias email address can fetch and send with the alias email addresses that are set up like a Gmail account. The reason is that the alias account information set in the server is transferred to the Nine app. And you can select this alias account as the "From" account.
It is likely that you will have to wait until the end of the year to use the ability to send a mail by using your Alias account. I sincerely ask for your understanding and cooperation.
Nine cannot support the alias because the Exchange server doesn't send emails via an alias email address. So it is unable to change a "From" email address on the client side. The Exchange server is supposed to change it to the primary accounts when sending out emails on the server side. However, we plan to support to add accounts for the 'Send as' manually.
Letting me explain in more details, it's like as follows.
In case you have an account in a mail server using EAS, you can't send a mail with an alias account because Exchange server will block not to change your "From: address" in sending a mail. In case of Exchange or Office365, even if server admin can register an alias to a user, finally you can't use the alias because the server will block you not to send a mail with the alias and will set it back to the primary email address. However, for outlook.com, if you can add an alias in the link (https://account.live.com/AddAssocId), then refresh the alias in the Nine on your device, you can send it a mail with the alias in the From: address. But it was to change the primary email address.
When you are sending a mail using the ActiveSync protocol, the server is supposed to process only the primary SMTP address (UPN in your case) normally.
Even if another alias email address is specified, the server is supposed to convert it to the primary SMTP address and then send it. There is no alternative because it is to convert from Exchange Server.
So we have a plan to support this Alias features using a way converting email address with SMTP protocol when a new Nine version will come out at the end of the year
This feature is likely to be added only after a new version is released. This feature is not available in the current architecture. It won't be possible to support this feature until the release of the new version early next year. Thank you for your understanding.
Thanks,
9Folders Support Team

Check out the Privacy Tester to rate your email app!

Sources

• K-9 Mail vs Aqua Mail: Which Is More Private and Secure
• Email - which apps keep it private
• Privacy focussed email client on Reddit
• Is K-9 Mail the only privacy-wise option for Android?

Connect your Samsung Android Phone to your PC

For simple file transfer, install the necessary drivers from the Samsung website.

Today's "quick" investigation into mirroring my android phone (Samsung) to PC turned up the following.

Samsung

Samsung used to have Samsung Link, but then deprecated it. Then they made SideSync, which was highly rated, but killed it off after getting in bed with Microsoft and instead created "Samsung Flow" - which seems to be a rebranded version of Microsoft's "Link to Windows" which is a Windows 10 app (no Windows 7 support). Samsung Flow is rated 3 stars on Google Play, apparently it's not the most reliable or performant solution to this problem.

Samsung DeX isn't exactly a screen mirroring solution but it works very well for "extending" your phone screen to a computer. All you need to do is install the software on your PC and connect the phone via USB!

3rd Party Screen Mirroring Apps

#1: ApowerMirror

4.4 on Google Play; works fairly well and you can get a "lifetime subscription"!

Subscription Solutions

These are highly rated but they require a monthly subscription:

• Mobizen
• AirDroid (this is the "original" screen mirroring app, it also allows for notifications on your desktop and more)
• SplashTop: quite confusing as they have half a dozen apps for offering similar functionality
• Vysor: this isn't rated so high, lots of users complaining about a lack of support and no refunds after it doesn't work; it does have a one-time purchase option though

Other articles on this topic: from makeuseof.com, techwiser.com, and fossbytes, and quora.