New to android, Email app question

[Dan TheMan86]

Hi everyone, I am coming from Windows Phone (which currently seems a LOT more simple to manage than Android lol) and I am confused about the email app. I created a gmail account for the SOLE purpose of transferring all my contacts from my Microsoft account over (I have no other purpose for it). I have added my two yahoo email accounts (that I check daily) to the default samsung "Email" app. I did not add my new Gmail account because I have no reason to sync or check that email. I see in the app manager there is an Email app and a Gmail app. What is the purpose of the Gmail app? It looks like I can't uninstall the Gmail app, but I can "disable" it. When I go into the app manager to disable Gmail it pops up a warning about causing problems with other apps and my data will be deleted. What does that mean? Will I still have my contacts and yahoo emails if I disable the Gmail app? Thanks for any help!

 

[SpookDroid]

Hi there. The GMail app, like the name implies, is just that: a portal to GMail. While you can add external accounts to GMail now, you definitely don't have to use that app to use GMail. Some of us, however, prefer it over the stock e-mail app on most phones, at least for GMail when you do use it.

For the GMail app, in particular, you can disable it without losing access to your contacts (and you probably didn't need to do that either if the Microsoft account, I'm guessing Outlook, supports Contact syncing, but that's another story). The warning that shows up is because on some apps (like the E-Mail app, for instance) there are components that might interfere with other apps if they're not enabled. This is not the case, however, with the GMail app. The stuff about losing data is for the app itself (when disabling, any data saved on the app is cleared and the app goes back to it's basic form, with no data, no settings, nothing).

 

[Dan TheMan86]

Thank you for the reply!! I'm gonna disable it now because it shows that it's used mobile data since April 6th and if I'm not using it, I might as well disable it.