With the recent release of Windows Mobile 6.5 and the newly improved Mobile Outlook most of us WM6.1 users are saying - what about us? Well the story is not as bleak as many might imagine. While the OS in the Windows Mobile devices is carrier 'owned' the applications are not. Luckily, Microsoft has decided to release the Outlook portion of WM6.5 as free upgrade for WM6.1 users. This is great news for me - I don't know about everyone else, but I am not interested in most of the WM6.5 features I simply want the new Outlook.
My current back-end environment is Microsoft Exchange 2010, Outlook 2010 and using the latest Mobile Outlook enhances my experience keeping the look and feel similar across clients. The upgrade was easy although it did force a re-sync of my Exchange data to my phone which took a bit of time even over the EvDO Rev A network.
More information about the upgrade and the features can be found here and it is a CAB file so you can use your WM device to navigate directly to it (my preference).
New Inbox View in Outlook Mobile
Single conversation thread Previous OCS RFC. There are four emails that make up the thread and all can be seen in a single view (reducing clutter and speeding up your day)!
The folders you select to sync are shown in your folder list. You can still expand your entire folder list by selecting All Folders.
New Single-click Voice Mail Integration or Exchange 2010 UM users. The play button eliminates the need to launch Windows Mobile player leaving you in your Inbox where you should be. The green phone button allows a single-click call back to the sender.
With Exchange 2010 and Mobile Outlook 6.5 text messages to your phone have the option of being integrated. This mean a text message received to your phone is synced with Outlook where you have the option of replying to the text directly (assuming you have the optional TXT provider in Outlook 2007 or you are using Outlook 2010 / Outlook Web Access 2010).