Microsoft’s Outlook app for Android is about to leave some users in the dust. Starting May 23, 2022, Android 8.0 will replace Android 7.0 as the minimum supported version of the mobile OS for installing Microsoft’s email client.

“If users in your organization are using Outlook for Android on phones running an older version of Android, they will no longer be able to update to newer versions of Outlook for Android when this change is implemented,” the company explained on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center yesterday.

Even though Android 8.0 was released almost five years ago, there are still many users running older versions of the mobile OS. According to Google’s latest official Android version distribution numbers shared by Android Police in November, 17.3% of Android users were still running Android 7.1 or older.

The Android fragmentation problem isn’t exactly something new, but the Outlook team is actually being quite generous with Android users: In comparison, Outlook for iOS requires iOS 14 as the minimum, and this version was only released in Fall 2020.

Outlook for Android and iOS are pretty solid email mobile clients, though Google’s Gmail Android app also supports multiple email accounts just fine. Anyway, if you’re still using a phone running Android 7.0 or older, you should probably think about upgrading to a newer and more secure device.

Tagged with Outlook for Android