Yahoo has launched a mobile mail beta. When I logged into Yahoo Mail using Opera Mini there was a Try New Mobile Beta link at the top of the start page. Naturally, I checked it out immediately. Yahoo Mobile Mail has always had a simple appearance, almost entirely text with the only color being a small logo at the top and beige bar at the bottom of the page. The beta is almost as simple but looks less sparse with most text elements now enclosed in what look like table cells but are actually div’s with css borders. There is also more color with header elements like folder titles having a pale yellow or lavender background. I do find it more attractive than the rather sparse old Yahoo mail page. Another difference is that the beta wraps the message header rather than requiring horizontal scrolling to see the full header. Unlike Gmail, there is no support for viewing attachments in the mobile Y! Mail beta. The first two images show the Inbox in the Beta (top image) and Classic versions of Y! Mail.
In terms of new features, the biggest is search. As with mobile Gmail, you can now search your mail folders for a text string (third image). Search returns a list of emails containing the string. You can then read any of the emails found by the search. However, you can’t search the body of an individual email to find where a particular word or phrase occurs. Also new is the ability to flag a message as Spam which helps train Yahoo’s rather good Spam filter. 
In addition. there’s a new Quick Reply feature (bottom image) which is a text-field at the bottom of each email body where you can type a reply to the current email.
While there is nothing ground breaking about the Yahoo beta, I like that a major focus of the beta seems to be on reducing the number of clicks and page loads needed to read, manage and reply to multiple emails. For example, with the old Yahoo mobile mail, when you do almost anything to an email like delete it, move it to another folder or reply, you’re taken back to the folder list where you have to choose Inbox or whatever folder you were in and then chose the next message. That gets tedious if you have a lot of mail. The beta takes you back to the current folder after any of these operations – one less click and one less page load and it brings Yahoo up to parity with the way Gmail and MS Live Mail work. The Quick Reply also saves a number of clicks. I think efficiency would be improved even more, if after a delete, reply or move, Yahoo would take you to the next unread message in the current folder, but the new behavior is a worthwhile improvement.
One area where I always found Yahoo mobile mail a little lacking was address book integration. This has not changed in the beta, at least not yet. When composing an email, you can search or browse your Yahoo Address book and choose the recipient(s). But you still can’t add the sender of a received email to the address book. Nor can you add a new recipient address from an email you are composing. The mobile versions of Live Mail and Gmail are somewhat better in this regard. Gmail automatically adds the recipient addresses of every sent email to your address book. Live Mail lets you add the sender of received emails. Of course, you should always be able to add any address to your address book by leaving mail, entering the address book and then, unless you have one of the relatively rare phones that support cut and paste, re-typing the contact’s email address. Actually you can’t even do that currently in Yahoo Mobile Mail. The New Contact menu item is missing from the address book in the beta, and in the old version, the New Contact link is still there, but it leads to the message,
“The add, edit and delete features have been temporarily disabled while we work on improvements…”
I take this to mean that some sort of improved address book is in the works but in the meantime we have to manage our address books on the desktop.
I don’t understand why it’s necessary to remove a working module before it’s replacement is ready but at least Yahoo Mail still has address book integration with Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes and Palm Desktop using a free version of Intellisync. For some reason Yahoo doesn’t do a very good job of promoting Intellisync. It’s not mentioned anywhere on the Mail or Addresses main pages. To find it, if you have a Yahoo account, go to your Yahoo Calendar and click the Sync tab in the top right corner. Or anyone you can go directly to an Intellisync help and download page here. Note that Intellisync is different from the SyncML that Yahoo is starting to rollout to a limited set of devices. SyncML synchronizes your phone’s built-in address book and calendar with Y! Addresses and Calendar. IntelliSync synchronizes Y! Addresses, Calendar, To-Do, and Notebook with desktop PIMs like Outlook, Notes and Act!. Synchronization is the main reason I use Y! Mail. Microsoft and Gmail don’t have true synchronization although they can import contacts from most desktop email programs and PIM’s
Speaking of things that are missing from the beta, where have the access keys gone? Classic Yahoo Mail, like Live Mail and Gmail has access keys, numeric accelerators that give you single keypress access to important features. For example in Gmail Mobile, when you are reading a message, pressing 0 takes you back to the Inbox, 7 deletes the current email, 0 lets you compose a new message. Access keys add more to usability of a phone with a numeric keypad than almost anything. I can’t believe Yahoo removed them in the beta. Someone please tell me this is just temporary.
Not all phones get the link which lets you try the mobile beta. It you want to try it anyway, the direct link is us.wap.yahoo.com/p/mail. Of course there is no guarantee it will work on unsupported devices. The beta currently doesn’t support WAP1 but I think it will eventually. I get an error message reading “WML not supported (yet).” when I select the Try Beta link on the Yahoo front page with the Openwave 7 (WAP 2) browser my Motorola i855.
My take on the beta is that it looks promising, the more attractive layout, search and better navigation are all pluses. If Yahoo adds some real address book integration or at least brings back the ability to edit the address book and also restores the access keys they will have a product which is approximately equal to the Gmail and Live mobile offerings in features and usability. The strengths of Yahoo’s underlying web based mail and PIM, particularly in synchronization, should allow Yahoo to retain their lead in mobile web mail.
Yahoo Mobile Mail Beta: xhtml-mp
Features: 
Usability: 
Emulator image courtesy Openwave Systems Inc. Openwave and the Openwave logo are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of Openwave Systems Inc. in various jurisdictions. All rights reserved.
If your your phone is supported (Opera Mini, most recent Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry phones, iPhone and Android) the
New Yahoo Mobile Mail ( it’s not a Beta anymore) is at: http://new.m.yahoo.com/w/ygo-mail
The Old Yahoo Mobile Mail at: http://m.yahoo.com/p/mail should work on all phones.
I also have the same issue. Have been trying to restore to the new beta but no luck so far nor there is any help or info on how to get the new beta.
Any help on this will be appreciated.
One day i open yahoo pag i see “try new beta inbox version” i try it and i feel happy because my inbox’s look change and i can see attachment , but one day i return to old version and i donot know how to restor my inbox as it was
I m having problems logging into my email,when log it allows me but to access to a mail i dont get through on my mobile.PLEASE help me solve this to be able to use yahoo and be happy.Thank you
Its true im having a problem with accessing my mails at yahoo. Whenever i enter the password i cannot get thru to my mail box. I would like to have my problem solved and will definitely make me happy.
I av been tring to sign up yahoomail from my mobile
@Silas N.
I’m able to use Yahoo Mail Classic on my phone using Opera Mini.
Here’s how:
1. Go into Y! Mail with a PC browser. Click the “Mail Classic” link at the top of the page and switch to Classic Y!Mail.
2. Launch Opera Mini and go to http://mail.yahoo.com and you should be in Mail Classic.
The key thing is that you must switch your account to use Mail Classic. You need to use a PC browser to make that switch. There doesn’t seem to be any way to use the “New” Yahoo Mail on your PC and switch to the Classic version on your phone.
Wish to get yahoo mail classic into mobile phones.
@Adejumo.
Sorry if I misunderstood you. You are really asking two different questions.
1. mail.yahoo.com starting in the home page. This happens with both classic and new versions now. You can try bookmarking your inbox although even that doesn’t always work, it tends to go back to the home page after a while.
2. Switching from classic to new versions of Yahoo Mail. In the top left corner of the page next to the Yahoo Mail logo you should see:
Sign Out | What’s New | Mail Classic
Click the Mail Classic link and you are done. If you can’t see the link on your phone do it on a PC. The choice applies to all the browsers you use with the same email account.
Thank you. But its as if you dont understand me. I said each time I want to view my mail box on my phone, it opens in yahoo front page (All-New mail) mode instead of the conventional classic mode. It also opens in this classic mode when done on a PC. Every efforts made to revert back to this classic mode on my phone has proven abortive. I need help to go back to classic mode.
@Adejumo,
I don’t have an E90 but on my N95, the following seems to work:
1 Go to mail.yahoo.com – as you say this will take you to a sort of mini homepage with news headlines, etc.
2. Click “Inbox” in the left column, your inbox should load.
3. Bookmark the Inbox page. The bookmark should return you to the inbox.
I use nokia E90 and mistakenly clicked All-New mail tab. Since then, it has always taken me to Yahoo front page which i never liked. Somebody should help me go back to classic.
I find the new yahoo mail page very unhandy. evertime you open an email you have to adjust the advertisement on the school. iwant my old yahoo classic back thank you
I WANT TO CHANGE MY YAHOO MAIL TO CLASSIC. PLEASE HELP ME
Want to set up my email address
I never use Reply-To but I just tried it and you are right. It works in the desktop version of Y!Mail but not the mobile Beta.
Good luck trying to get anyone at Yahoo to fix it. I’ve never had much luck with bug reports to Yahoo, Google, AOL or MSN. They basically don’t support free products.
Your best bet might be posting to the Yahoo Group, YahooMobileDevelopers (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/yhoomobiledevelopers/). The group has pretty low traffic and one of the lead developers on the Mobile Widgets team frequentlly responds to reported issues.
Check Yahoo! Mobile Beta…with SMTP Reply-To header is not working as expected any clues…
Is it possible to switch back to yahoo mobile classic, beta has a lot of problems.
Walden,
Yahoo voice chat doesn’t work on mobile phones. It’s strictly PC to PC.
Dennis
I can’t get to chat on my cell ,please send me the link thanks.
eniola,
The old Yahoo mobile mail is gone, there is no way to get it back.
Don’t post your email address on the web unless you want an inbox full of SPAM.
i want to use my formal wap.yahoo.co.uk i dnt like this new one any one who can asssist me should plz mail me on [deleted]
I’m in problem to operate yahoo in my mobile.I’m not using beta i want classic back. And someone can help me what is the yahoo’s classic front page.
I have spent alongtime without checking my email messages,when i try to open my email using my yahoo id and my pass word it doesnt open. Can you give me some simple settings.
Raffo,
Thanks for the link. That’s something I’ve been looking for, a way to contact Yahoo regarding problems with their mobile applications. Wish I could find something like that for MSN Mobile, AOL and Google.
Dennis.
Sorry about that Dennis.If someone want to give a complaint with yahoo about this issue the link is http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mobile/… I did it already and received response they said tha theya are working in this matter.Thank you for your help.
Raffo,
Where are you doing this requesting? If you doing it here it won’t do any good. This site has no connection with Yahoo.
Dennis
I don’t Know how many times we must to request this we want back the classic mail to yahoo mobile please is much better that the current one.
I’d prefer to use both versions until the best functions of both are put together but I don’t like that I cannot choose this kind of usage. Please give me the freedom of choice as it was there before!:-( THANX!
I want to change from yahoo mail beta to yahoo mail classic because i cannot login into my mail on my mobile.
Tried logging into beta, only allows first letter of username to be a capital letter. my username is all in lowercase, so I can’t login!
Please bring back old features of CLASSIC MAIL and CLASSIC SIGN IN in the Yahoo Front Page tutorial – some older phoes (wap based browsing) can`t open the hew features (i.e. Mail Beta or Messenger Beta) – so please try and get back those old features on the Yahoo Front Page.-
Many thaks in advance !!!
i’d actually been using the beta, and loved it…but when they eliminated the classic, they also DRASTICALLY changed the beta,…eliminating the beta that i really liked in the process…ugh. this new one is certainly buggy, took away some really nice functionality (the quick REPLY/DELETE/NEXT links at the top of each email, and some others, like the ones listed above).
there are some nice things in the new new beta, but seriously….bring back some of the functionality of the …er…old beta.
Does anyone else get server error/messages with no email sent while using beta?
I want classic mail back, beta is not working good in my mobil specially when i try to compose is incomplete.Please bring back classic.
I am having problems as well opening my yahoo mail using BETA and am very discouraged that yahoo is not allowing it’s mobile users’ to choose which mobile mail format they prefer..DO NOT LIKE BETA..WANT CLASSIC BACK!!!
have problems in opening my yahoo mail box using beta version.
Any suggestion.
Robin, my point exactly. It is a huge pain if you have filters set up, because there’s no “front page” indicating new message count, or where those messages are. Yahoo, if you’re listening…. please change this so we can see what we have before we go to the inbox!!! (Btw, does anybody know where there’s a feedback page for the service so that we CAN make sure this beef gets to where it needs to be heard?)
I have filters set up in my Yahoo mail so that mail is delivered to certain folders. With this beta version of Yahoo mobile mail, I now have to scroll down and open each folder in order to know if I have new mail in them. With the classic version it would show the number of new mail items beside each folder name. This SUCKS. If this is the beta version, why are we FORCED to use it?
The “beta” does seem faster than the old “classic” and it finally works on my Motorola i850!
PS to add: I will say the beta is MUCH faster than the previous client. This may simply be because they’ve rearranged how the resources are used or because they’ve upgraded their servers to accommodate the new client or whatever, but there has been virtually no hanging time – almost instant.
I like the beta, but it annoys me I can’t get to the original client any more – mine, too, automatically switched itself the day before yesterday.
The thing I really DON’T like about this is that there is no longer a screen which shows how many messages you have, particularly those in folders OTHER than the inbox. I have filters set up; to check those folders, I now have to manually go to “folders” and then view each one individually. Which is kind of a pain…
If anybody has a workaround for this, please do post!
c,
It looks like you can’t get to Yahoo’s Classic Mobile Mail anymore The old link (http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/raw?dp=mail) now goes to the beta.
It seems like Yahoo’s a little unclear on the concept of what a beta is.
The’ve taken the Classic Mail down even though the new version is still beta which by definition is “A version of an application that is made available prior to the official release for the purposes of testing”
i want my mobile back to classic yahoo mail, how can i do this from the phone itself? please help!
Please bring back the delete feature.
i like gmail. My wish, account for google mail server.
Can anyone help me understand why the mail beta which used ot work now takes me to a small download (.1k) which fails. I can no longer access the beta.
There is still a link to the beta on the classic mail page, so I don’t think it is dead.
One thing that still needs an upgrade is Yahoo!’s support. They are pretty useless!!!
I still haven’t figured out how to make Beta load automatically when I log in. I had to bookmark the email with the info on it. How can I save the settings?
Heidi,
Thanks for the post. You are right, the accesskeys are there and are working. I eagerly await the full release of the mobile mail beta , it looks very promising.
Dennis
Regarding the accesskeys. You’re right that, visually speaking, they’re gone. And you’re right that there is, for the moment, no mail-specific access key functionality.
However, Yahoo! Mobile is experimenting with a more global approach to access keys. 1, 7, 8, 9 and 0 are reserved for non-specific property use. Meaning…
1 takes you to the search box on any property (Mail, Movies, Search, Addressbook, etc.)
0 takes you to the Yahoo! home page
8 takes you to the property home page
7 and 9 are Previous/Next shortcuts
So, yes, all the keys switched functionality and some functionality is still lacking and nothing is, um, documented. It is a beta after all. :)