While most Android users stick to using the Gmail app or even their smartphone’s native email app, that hasn’t stopped other apps from trying to corner a portion of the market by improving their services. Microsoft Outlook users of course have their own Android app, and the latest update just might please them, as it offers better search options and even offline access for downloaded emails.
The previous version of the Outlook.com app lets users search only those emails that have been downloaded on the device. But if you’re a long-time Outlook user and have hundreds (or thousands) of old emails, you of course don’t want to download all of them. The update now lets your app communicate with the online server so that when you search for emails, it can go through your whole account, not just the ones on your smartphone.
But if you have a lot of storage space in your phone, why not just download all your emails? The unlimited sync feature will let you do so and let you have offline access to all these emails to make life easier when you’re not actually connected to the Internet. The update also now lets you send out emails from the app using any of your outlook.com aliases (just make sure you won’t mix them up because it doesn’t have a retrieve sent email feature).
Other new features in the Outlook.com update include making your app interface more colourful by offering eight new colors to choose from (because Microsoft blue is so 1990s). You can also now set your email to send automated replies when you’re on vacation and just want to let everyone know that you’re enjoying yourself in Paris or Bali. Chinese language support is also now included in the app. So if you haven’t yet, you can download Outlook.com for free on the Google Play Store.