Microsoft introduced a preview of Outlook for Android back in January of this year and in that time frame they have released 17 updates for the app to finally arrive at today - the official release.
According to the company this app has now reached the same level of functionality as the Outlook for iOS app and another reason they felt it was ready to lose its preview label today.
Outlook is an example of Office's new development model for building mobile apps—deliver a great first version of our apps and then iterate quickly with the help and feedback of our users. This removal from preview is not a change in that plan or a statement that we are ‘done.’ We will continue our pace of updates to make the app better each week in response your feedback.
Some of the areas the app has improved over these past three months while it was in preview include:
- Improved look and feel: Updated icons, more consistent Outlook experience across operating systems/devices.
- IMAP support: Now supports email services from AOL and Comcast.
- People section: Replaced top contacts view with a unified view from all email accounts. Easier access to interact with that contact directly from the people listing.
- Directory search: When viewing your calendar in landscape mode there is now a three day view. Additional changes provided support for zero length meetings, ability to remove an item from the calendar and a better day selection interface when scheduling/editing meetings.
- Swipe gestures: Added ability to configure what happens with right and left swipe gestures to make handling of your inbox content match your preferred style of working within your inbox. Also added capability to select your default folders for archive and schedule at any time.
- Trash/Deleted Items: The ability to delete items for good was a top request and is now implemented thanks to user feedback.
The Outlook team also confirmed the app is supported on Android 4.0 or higher and available in the following languages: 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 Outlook Mail and Calendar universal apps were released with Windows 10 Mobile build 10051 on 11 April 2015 and some of the features mentioned above are already integrated into them. However, they are previews so there is still some work to be done to reach this level of fit and finish.
