Microsoft Outlook Lite has arrived for Android in some countries

Microsoft will release a new, smaller and faster Outlook Lite app for Android this week. The lightweight version of Outlook is meant to have a lesser file size, quicker performance, and less battery consumption while still offering the essential capabilities of the standard Microsoft Outlook mobile app.

Outlook Lite is around 5MB in size, and Microsoft claims it uses “very little storage space on your phone.” It's been tailored to function swiftly on all Android devices with as little as 1GB of RAM. Because it's a bit lighter, it uses less phone memory and should save battery life. Most significantly, because it works well across a variety of mobile networks, including 2G and 3G ones that are still in use in several countries throughout the world.

Outlook Lite will be available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, India, Mexico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. Outlook Lite will work with Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live mail MSN Messenger Premium Business Microsoft 365, and Exchange Online accounts.

One of the first big tech companies to develop a reduced-size version of its original Facebook Android app was Meta. In 2015, Facebook Lite was simply a 1MB program designed specifically for developing countries. Google released Gmail Go in 2018 as part of its line of "Go" lightweight Android applications. Microsoft claims it's introducing Outlook Lite to make its mobile email app more accessible to people on low-end phones from all over the world, according to Pradeep Elavarasan, senior product manager at Microsoft.

Microsoft is also working on a new Outlook for Windows app. The new program, which is still in testing, is built around Outlook online. In the years ahead, it will take the place of the Outlook for Windows app.