Microsoft has confirmed that its speedy and light version of Outlook, dubbed Lite, will soon be arriving as an Outlook e-mail client option to your trusty Android phone or tablet. The Outlook Lite for Android plans are listed on Microsoft’s 365 roadmap and the client is said to be in the final stages of development and testing.
The selling point of Outlook Lite is that it is an “Android app that brings the main benefits of Outlook in a smaller app size with fast performance for low-end devices on any network,” touts Microsoft.
Those Outlook subscribers who are using the full-fledged app on a daily basis can attest that it certainly could do with some more polish and de-bloating. Presumably, Microsoft will leave the essentials like the e-mail client and Calendar integration, stripping unnecessary functions and simplifying the client’s options to only the most widely used features.
That’s the way Microsoft went with Skype Lite that many people prefer before the standard full-size version. Microsoft lists the general availability date for the Outlook Lite as July 2022, but it’s not clear if the app will launch as a beta trial option first, or the team from Redmond will directly issue the first stable version to the Play Store.
Last year, Microsoft removed the Outlook e-mail client app’s ability to sync calendars with the Facebook, Meetup, and Evernote services, while the app has other very useful functions like the ability to categorize events or contacts which will probably be transferred over to the Outlook Lite version as well.
