Microsoft adds external image blocking to Outlook for Android.

Microsoft added a "Block External Images" feature in Outlook for Android. This feature, once activated, will prevent images in emails sent by people, not in your contacts from downloading automatically. Microsoft says "Block external images setting will not block images that are embedded in the email as attachments, including most emails sent from friends and family."

While not a security threat, blocking images in emails protects users privacy as these emails can sometimes include references to images hosted on the internet and can be used to track whether someone has read an email. All in all, this blocking feature is a welcome addition if you value your privacy. 

By default, the image blocking setting is disabled. In order to activate, tap the hamburger menu - the three horizontal bars at the top left - then tap the settings icon at the bottom left. Tap your email account or any other email if you have several accounts and toggle the blocking setting. It turns blue when activated.

This update is already available to download in Google Play Store.

Microsoft Outlook for Android lets you resize large images attached to messages to use less data.

Our beloved devices are great, but like all things, have their pros and cons. But what matters most to us is data consumption. A phone without a data connection is a dumb phone and unfortunately, data costs money and we have to find the right balance to save as much data as possible. Sure, our devices are getting smarter at that with most of them having a data saver feature of some sort. And better yet, we now have apps with their own built-in data saver, mostly browsers. But there’s more.

Today Microsoft updated Outlook for Android with a feature that gives users the choice between resizing images or keeping the original size when sending them as attachments in emails. The changelog says the new feature will “resize large images attached to your message to use less data.” The screenshot above will appear when sending images to let users choose whether they want to resize and save data or not. This comes in handy, especially now that our phones' cameras are getting better and better at capturing high-resolution images.

To take advantage of this data-saving feature in Microsoft Outlook, get the update in Google Play Store and start saving.

Gmail app update automatically show images in emails.

Google published an update for its Gmail app that enables the automatic display of images in emails. Some do get annoyed by the fact that they have to wait for images to download and while for others it is a means to save money because image downloads can indeed take its toll on data plans. The latter group need not worry because even if Google made the auto-download of images a default, they also added a switch in the settings to turn it off. 

Go into the settings by tapping the three vertical dots at the top right corner of the app. Then tap your email address and scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap Images. You'll see two options there: Always show and Ask before showing. 

The update also includes some other nice features like the ability to set a vacation responder right on your device. In case you're wondering what that is, it's the equivalent of the Out Of Office. Check out the log below for additional features:

What's New

● Images now show automatically

● Set up your vacation responder in Settings

● Send or download attachments of any type, including documents, PDFs, zip files

● (Android 4.3+) Attach multiple files at once

● (Android 4.4) Print emails and attachments

● Enhanced performance for low memory devices

Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and up.

Download/update the Gmail app in Google Play Store.