When I setup 4Smartphone on my device, a new favorite was added to PIE that I ignored initially. It turns out that the link was actually for Outlook Mobile Access (OMA), which I never knew existed! Seen below, OMA is a streamlined version of Outlook Web Access that you can access through a regular computer: it allows you to view all of your Outlook data, and not just a few days worth saved onto your device. Even on EDGE, OMA is pretty quick because it’s mostly text-based.

Windows Mobile makes little use of side to side scrolling actions. On Smartphone, a good place to have side to side scrolling would be in email: when viewing one particular folder, a tap to the right or left should move to the next folder (by default, right/left movement is set to toggle between MMS, Outlook Mobile, and text messages). In order to switch folders, you have to go to menu, then folders, and enter the desired folder. On Pocket PC, you can get a quick folder view by tapping the folder name in the upper left corner. I know that the mail client was stripped a bit for the sake of use on a smaller screen, but QVGA Smartphones can handle a lot more screen data.

Also, it’d be great if you could specify the email notification on the Home Screen by folder. The notification only tells you when there’s email in your Inbox folder, so I always have to manually check (by opening up Outlook Mobile) to see whether there are new message in any of my Inbox sub folders.

To wrap things up a bit, I can say that overall, my experience on the 4Smartphone Exchange hosted account has been liberating and very enjoyable – I strongly recommend the service to anyone that has a Windows Mobile phone device with any version of the OS that would like to take mobility to the next level (and for $4-$7 a month, they make it VERY easy to get on board). Microsoft’s implementation of mail on the Smartphone platform is a bit weak in terms of overall customizability, but hopefully higher screen resolutions and better hardware will drive them to make the experience at least as good as or better than Pocket PC.

How has your experience been with Outlook Mobile mail?

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