A second Outlook app called “Outlook Lite” has been available for Android for some time. It is only available in a few countries and, according to the official description, is intended for cheap and therefore less powerful smartphones. But there may be more behind it, namely a fundamentally new Outlook version that could replace the previous one.

As mentioned, Outlook Lite is not available in the local Play Store, but the APK file is easy to find from the relevant sources. I had not paid any attention to this version for the reasons mentioned, but that changed when I came across the entry in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap announcing the availability of Outlook Lite for business customers from July. So far you can only use the app with a private Microsoft account and you can only create a single account.

The announcement made me curious, so I got the APK file. My personal Microsoft account is practically “empty” because I manage all mail, appointments and contacts with my work M365 account.

The following screenshots are therefore sparsely populated, on the other hand I didn’t have to redact any personal data.

Compared to the “full” Outlook app, Outlook Lite is really extraordinarily high-performing. Not that Outlook for Android is noticeably slow, but the Lite version just runs a lot smoother. But this comparison may also be a little unfair, because the Lite app has practically no data to manage for me.

Apart from that, however, it is noticeable that nothing is light or slimmed down here. Aside from the fact that you can only configure one account and one type of account, I didn’t realize it was missing anything compared to the regular Outlook app. The settings are even more comprehensive and also look tidier, which applies to the design of the entire app.

Overall, Outlook Lite feels more modern, and after playing around with it a bit, I have a suspicion that Microsoft is quietly, so to speak, quietly testing a fundamentally new Outlook app for Android as part of the makeover across all platforms is. The new Outlook for Windows is already being tested .