Hotmail Wave 4 ActiveSync Support Enables Push Email, Calendar, and Contacts

As of the start of this week the over 300 million mobile devices worldwide featuring Exchange ActiveSync support can be easily connected to Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4, as announced recently. In combination with POP3, Exchange ActiveSync in Windows Live Hotmail Wave 4 deliver an excellent alternative to IMAP, allowing customers with EAS capable devices to synchronize content with Microsoft’s email service.

Of course, users already familiar with ActiveSync are undoubtedly well aware that the protocol allows much more than email synchronization.

Essentially, now that Exchange ActiveSync is live, Hotmail Wave 4 supports push email, calendar, and contacts.

This is of course done without connecting to an Exchange Server, as mobile devices with EAS support can connect directly to Hotmail.

“EAS keeps everything in sync between your phone and Hotmail, so whatever you do on your phone, like delete an email, add an appointment, or update one of your contacts with a new number, will also be reflected on the web, and vice-versa,” explained Dick Craddock Group Program Manager Windows Live Hotmail.

“If you use an email client on your PC that already syncs with Hotmail, like Outlook with the Outlook Connector or Windows Live Mail, what you do on your phone will show up there as well, delivering a seamless experience for managing your stuff between your PC email client, your browser, and your phone.”

All of the content, including email, calendar and contact which is updated is automatically pushed to the built in clients on the mobile devices.

But as far as I’m concerned, one of the best things about Exchange ActiveSync in Windows Live Hotmail is that it allows users to take advantage of the innovative new features introduced by Microsoft in Wave 4, such as Sweep.

At the same time, in the case of Windows Phone 7 mobile devices, users will get to enjoy all the smartphone’s features in concert with Hotmail, including filtering options and search.

Watch the video embedded at the bottom of this article in order to get an idea of just Exchange ActiveSync for Hotmail Wave 4 brings to the table.

According to Microsoft, some of the most popular Windows, Nokia, and Palm smartphones, but also devices such as the iPhone and iPad support ActiveSync.

In order to connect their phone with Hotmail, users need to enter the following settings into the mobile apps on the device:

Server / URL - m.hotmail.com