14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft Outlook is right now one of the best email apps on mobile, period. Based on the less-famous Accompli app that Microsoft purchased many years ago, Outlook has gradually become a must-have email client on mobile devices, including here both iPhones and Android phones.
Microsoft’s commitment to delivering new features and keeping Outlook as fresh as possible certainly contributed to the whole thing.
From time to time, however, Microsoft has to make changes that not everybody is a big fan of.
And as reported by onMSFT recently, the Redmond-based software giant is now dropping support for some older Android versions in Microsoft Outlook.
Android 8 and later required moving forward
The announcement doesn’t come as a big surprise though. Software companies end up dropping support for older versions of the operating system their software runs on pretty much because they need to move to newer technology only supported in the latest releases. And at the same time, the userbase of older operating systems is also declining, so it makes little sense to continue investment in support for them in the long term.
Microsoft is now doing this for Android, as the company is giving up on versions 7.1 and below.
In other words, if you’re still running Android 7.1 or an earlier version, Outlook will no longer receive updates on your device. If the app is already installed, it should continue to run normally, but once it’s removed, it’s gone forever.
The only thing to deal with the whole thing is to update your device to a newer version of Android. Naturally, Android 8 is the next big release, but on the other hand, if you get a phone that supports Android 12, you should be good to go for many years from today.
Moving forward, Outlook will only support Android 8 and newer.