Microsoft, as promised, began rolling out ActiveSync support for Hotmail on August 30.
Hotmail’s support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) is available to all existing Hotmail users worldwide today, a spokesperson said. (In other words, this isn’t a gradual rollout, like the delivery of the new Wave 4 Hotmail has been.)
The new push synchronization support is supported on Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Nokia E_Series, S-Series and N-Series phones. But it will not work right off the bat with Android devices.
According to Microsoft, the “Hotmail team will add Android to list of supported devices in the coming months after testing is completed.” Access from Android 2.1 is not currently supported due to known client issues on Android 2.1, Microsoft officials said. However, “(t)here are users successfully syncing from Hotmail via the default application or the Touchdown application on Android 2.2,” the Sofites added.
(Update: Microsoft may be saying it is not yet “officially” supporting Android with Hotmail ActiveSync, but my ZDNet UK colleague Mary Branscombe and others say they’ve gotten EAS to work to varying degrees on various Android phones.)
Microsoft has provided steps for enabling Hotmail ActiveSync on these various devices.
Hotmail ActiveSync enables users to get their mail, calendar and contacts pushed automatically to their phones using the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Changes made on phones will be reflected on the Web and vice-versa. For users already using e-mail clients on their PCs that currently sync with Hotmail — like Outlook with the Outlook Connector or Windows Live Mail — Hotmail sync also will be supported.
LiveSide.net noted back in June 2010 that Microsoft was testing ActiveSync for Hotmail, and that a number of users had it working. In mid-August — shortly after Microsoft announced it had completed rolling out the new Hotmail Wave 4 release to all of its Hotmail users — LiveSide reported that some users were able to access ActiveSync for Hotmail, but some were not
