In the pre-installed email app, when I want to add an account and type a gmail email address I’m redirected to a google log-in window, whereas for my other email accounts from another email providers I could simply enter the credentials within the app. Do you have the same experience?
Yes it’s normal, you have to authenticate directly on Google for first use. I don’t know why though but it’s the way it works maybe a Google security to allow apps to access Google’s accounts.
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I have always had the same experience when trying to add a google email account …it goes through the google web site login pages. This is the same across any app / ROM or if attempting through a PC.
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mhm, using a google mail account on a google free phone ?!?!?! 
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@harvey186 you make a good point I think.
I’ll probably manage without gmail on my phone. Maybe I’ll configure gmail to redirect incoming emails, for a little while.
Agree with you @harvey186 but we have been using gmail and outlook for so long … it will take some time to move back completely.
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I used k-9 for years with gmail account and never saw that Google page until I tried “The actual name for the OS would be announced soon.”
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@andu never used K-9 before but that is a very interesting observation because /e/ mail is a fork from k-9!! As you can see from the references here https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/apps/Mail . Let me have this verified with the development team as to why we are seeing this difference in behavior.
Hi, Google accounts use “OAuth” based authentication, which means they can’t be accessed using a username/password (by default).
K-9 Mail does not support OAuth, so you have to enable “less secure access” in your Google account (to allow K-9 to access your emails with just username/password).
We didn’t think this was a very user-friendly approach, so we decided to add OAuth support to our fork of K-9. Hence, you see the Google login page.
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Thanks for the explanation @nihar1024. I was testing this out. If you disable ‘less secure apps’ permission in google you start getting pop -ups like this showing up while adding gmail accounts in k-9 mail app.
To simplify, one doesn’t need OAuth in order to login into a Google account, it can be done with username/password, OAuth is not mandatory and it’s not more secure as they claim. In fact it has more to do with convenience then security, one set of credentials for several unrelated services. Promoted by none other then Google, Facebook and the like and for sure another good way to track people’s activities. So, user-friendly yes but for a price.
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Yes, a bit weird to install gmail on a non google phone. I ditched gmail years ago and my husband did this last year. He had a group of about 700 addresses in gmail and he managed to transport everything to Soverin.net, a privacy friendly mail service.
We also have Tutanota.com.
Protonmail is very secure, but quite expensive.
And there is Fastmail. We recommend Soverin.net and Tutanota.com
Hum completely wrong sorry 
Activate IMAP in settings of your gmail account and you can then access it as nearly any IMAP/SMTP accounts with K-9 or any regular email clients ! Unless as quoted I don’t see the point to add a gmail account on a non google account 
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Yep but very secure and using Protonmail as my main mail account I can confirm you the app works just perfectly fine on /e/ 
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+1 same here with ProtonMail client (and in fact working well better on /e/ than on official roms 
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