Microsoft Outlook released on Android and iOS to Complete Cross-Platform Vision

The release of Microsoft Outlook for the iOS and Android mobile operating systems is another step in the right direction for the software company which decided a few months ago to make a determined push to be more open and much more cross-platform.

The move did not come cheap though. Microsoft made the move to purchase the Acompli app business for $200 million back in late November and announced just in December 1 by Microsoft.

An initial discussion some months ago about how Acompli could best integrate Office 365 into their new email app while still maintaining access to cloud from Google Drive, Box, Apple iCloud and Dropbox eventually led to the larger software company seeing the benefit in being out the smaller one. This provided an innovative approach to email on both iOS and Android and a launch platform that later morphed into Outlook for Android and Outlook for iOS.

The iOS app version is in the final version stage, but the Android version is a preview version that is still in beta at the present time.

Two Tab Organization

With the Outlook app, mail is separated out into Focused and Other. Emails deemed important enough will be placed in the Focused tab and all other emails into the Other tab. This feature is quite similar to the Gmail Priority Inbox one.

Emails don't have to stay in the Other or Focused tabs either. Emails can be transferred between tabs and the software will begin to learn what types of emails are less or more important to you in much the same way that intelligent mobile keyboard applications start to be able to predict the true meaning behind incorrectly types phrases.

Left and Right Swiping

For lovers of all things swipe, the Outlook app makes plenty of use for the swipe motion. An email can be quickly archived, moved, deleted, flags or marked as read (or unread) with a simple directional swipe. The swipe motion can also be customized to let the user decide what types of swiping causing what email related actions to take place. This is a good step up about the competition where such actions are usually fixed and inflexible.

Schedule Email

The Schedule Email feature is becoming a popular one with Firefox or Chrome add-ons and also other email apps like Mailbox from Dropbox.

Pick an email that you wish to know about sometime later, swipe to the right and the Scheduler will appear. Set the email to disappear from your inbox but only to return later at a scheduled date and time. There are four options for timing: options: "In a few hours," "This evening," "Tomorrow morning," or "Choose a time." which lets the user specify exactly when the email should return.

The time options are nice, however I think often users would prefer to be reminded in an hour or 4 hours, rather than something more vague like “the morning” or “this evening” when the exact time is not known. This likely will lead users to have to use the “Choose a time” option more often than they would have liked.

For people who like to work on the Inbox Zero approach to clearing their inbox of all email this might work quite well. For other people who prefer to leave certain emails inside their inbox for regular review it might not be so useful.

Quick Filters

There is also a handy Quick Filter feature which with just one tap will bring up the unread, flagged or email where files were attached. There is a quick unsubscribe link on newsletter emails which stop the need to hunt through the email to find that option.

Multiple Cloud Accounts Supported

In keeping with the app as it was previously developed and the pledge by Microsoft to support more platforms openly, there is attachment support for Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and more. This makes it much easier to use files storage in a variety of popular cloud storage services rather than just Microsoft's OneDrive product. Nice.

Drawbacks

Presently while the app can retrieve and send email to Exchange mail servers, Google, iCloud, Outlook.com and Yahoo mail accounts, it doesn't have IMAP server support. This is one feature that will be added in a future version of the Outlook app.

Video Run-Down for Oulook App

Watch this video to get a clearer idea about how some of the features work within the app. This video focused on the iOS Outlook app:

Whether a user currently uses Outlook on their home PC, the Outlook app for iOS and Android is a worth email app in its own right. Many similar features to other email apps, good swipe support for fast email processing, two tabbed priority email categories, and multi-cloud storage attachment options make this an email contender in its own right. Of course, Office has made its way to some mobile platforms already so this rounds out the mobile offering from Microsoft. This Outlook does lack all the features of the desktop based version, but as a purely email app it is up there with the best ones available.