Today Microsoft announced Outlook for iOS and a preview version for Android. iOS and Android devices already have calendar apps, but Microsoft said that the new Outlook app makes it easier to sort through your e-mail, contacts, calendar and file-sharing. The new Outlook app for iOS and Android phones and tablets are based on Acompli, an app company that Microsoft acquired for over $200 million in December.
On iOS it is a full production release, but on Android it is a preview. You can connect to accounts including Exchange, Office 365, Outlook.com, iCloud, Google and Yahoo, and – on Android only – any IMAP account.
Mobile Outlook delivers a smattering of features not found in stock e-mail apps (for either platform), starting with a "snooze" option (here called Schedule) that lets you temporarily remove a message from your inbox and resurface it at a later time.
You can activate this right from within your inbox view just by swiping an e-mail to the right. That brings up the Schedule selector, which provides four options: "In a few hours," "This evening," "Tomorrow morning," and "Choose a time." The first of these strikes me as unnecessarily vague, and it would be nice to have a couple more immediate choices, like "Half an hour" or "One hour."
Swiping left, of course, affords another quick-action option: Archive, by default, but you can customize both swipe settings for functions like Delete, Flag and Mark Unread. (Alas, you can assign only one function to either swipe; other email apps, including Apple's, give you more.)
The Outlook app separates mail into two tabs — Focused and Other. The important e-mails will be placed in the Focused inbox. If you move your e-mail in or out of your Focused inbox, Outlook will start to learn which type of messages are important to you. Swiping left or right lets you take actions like archive, delete, move, flag and mark as read/unread. The swipe gestures can be personalized if you do not like the default settings, which gives the Outlook app a leg up above the competition. There is also a “Schedule Email” feature that temporarily removes e-mails from your inbox and returns at a time of your choosing.
Finding important emails is now lightning fast. Outlook’s predictive search quickly finds the right emails, people and files as you type just a few letters. Outlook also lets you pivot on People, so you can see the people you email with most often and easily find all the emails, meetings and files shared with those people.
I particularly like the Quick Filter option a single tap will show you only your Unread, Flagged or Files-included e-mail. Another great perk: a one-tap Unsubscribe link for newsletters and other semi-junk you no longer wish to receive. Best of all, these features work across your favorite email accounts, including Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.
Most email apps completely ignore your calendar or have a minimal level of integration. In Outlook, your calendars are available right within the app, allowing direct interaction with your email, including features like viewing meeting details, invitees and their attendance status. The ‘Quick RSVP’ feature lets you respond to meetings (Accept / Tentative / Decline) right from your inbox, without even opening the mail.
Outlook for iOS and Android is designed to be familiar to users of both platforms. iOS devices will display familiar icons and symbols for creating new messages; the Android display will include a Navigation Drawer for various tools within the app and settings available in the App Overflow menu.
On Android, Outlook is called “Preview” because the iOS version is ahead in terms of performance and features. The Outlook app requires iOS 8.0+ or Android 4.0+. Here is the list of languages that Microsoft said it supports: English, Norwegian (Bokmål), Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.
The new Outlook app replaces Microsoft’s Outlook.com app for Android and the OWA apps for Android and iOS. The older apps will be around for now, but they are likely going to be phased out as the Outlook app enhances. Microsoft said that they will be updating the Outlook app on a weekly basis so it will constantly improve. You can download the app on iTunes and Google Play now.