Microsoft on Tuesday announced it has updated its Outlook.com app for Android with a revamped user interface and a few new features. You can download the latest version of the app now from Google Play.
Microsoft says it has overhauled the entire user interface so “you can get the same great Outlook.com look and feel you’ve come to love on Windows 8 and the web on your Android device.” Here’s how it looks:
As for the new features, the app has gained conversation threading, filters for unread and flagged mail, as well as the ability to mark messages as junk. You can see the last one in action in the right screenshot above.
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Conversation threading in particular will be very useful on mobile where there is limited screen space. It’s frankly a feature that should have been included from the start: grouping related emails together is more of a default thing nowadays than an extra.
For those wondering about ActiveSync support, it doesn’t appear that Google is budging. As such, Microsoft is focusing entirely on its app when it comes to Android:
We believe that the best mobile experience is enabled through Exchange ActiveSync–which provides a rich, powerful, network-optimized experience for Windows Phone, iOS and other mobile devices. However, native support for Exchange ActiveSync on Android devices varies significantly and so we build a separate app to ensure as many people as possible can have a great Outlook.com experience across all their devices.
In this case, Microsoft simply doesn’t have a choice but to keep supporting its Android users in the best way it can. For now, that seems to be the Outlook.com app for Google’s platform.
See also – Microsoft hopes Google’s discontinuation of Exchange ActiveSync support will bolster Outlook.com and As Outlook.com passes 60m users, Microsoft drops preview tag and preps ad push to kill Hotmail
Top image credit: ilco
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