Mobile Hotmail Sign in: check emails from your cell phone web browser
Whether you have an expensive smartphone or a lower-cost mobile handset cell phone, Hotmail gives you three ways to check your emails, either using a Wi-Fi connection or your 3G / 4G network. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the Mobile Hotmail Sign in feature to check your email messages from a mobile-friendly website: while some smartphones (and higher end handsets) will let you use the regular Windows Live Hotmail website, that experience is really optimized for regular, desktop web browsers: some functionality will not work, be very slow, or be quite expensive on your cell phone monthly bill.
Check your email messages from the Windows Live mobile website
Open your smartphone / cell phone's web browser, and follow these steps:
Note: we are using the Opera Mini mobile browser in this tutorial, but these steps remain identical regardless of which phone browser you are using. Since we are "Hotmail Plus" member, your inbox may look slightly different (ads displayed).
- Inside your mobile browser's address bar, type "
m.live.com" - and hit Enter or click "Go".
- This will load the Hotmail Mobile page; click on the "Sign in" link displayed at the top and at the bottom of that page (which also contains a link to Sign up to create a Hotmail account). This is what the mobile version of the Hotmail login form will look like on your cell phone:
- If, as we assume, you have already used the regular Hotmail Sign in, this form will look quite familiar: type your email address inside the "Windows Live ID" text field, and your password inside the "Password" field. If you feel safe about access to your cell phone, you can optionally check the "Save my password" (option is enabled by default), to spare you from entering all your credentials whenever you want to check your emails from your cell phone.
- Use the "Forgot your password?" link if needed; the "Get a Windows Live ID" link allows you to create a new Hotmail account; finally, click on the "Sign in with phone number and PIN" link to setup your own login process from this particular cell phone (see our "Login to Hotmail with single-use sign in code" tutorial for more info). Now click on the "Sign in" button.
- As soon as you do, Windows Live will load the Hotmail "Home" page; click "Go to inbox" to access your messages. Notice how this streamlined interface is optimized for basic mobile browsers, which means that you should be able to check your emails with nearly any web-enabled cell phone (older models might have problems). Here's a Mobile Hotmail inbox:
- Just click on a message title to open that particular email; the checkboxes displayed next to each message allow you to perform basic actions: if you scroll down to the bottom of your inbox, you can apply the following commands on the selected email(s) - Delete, Move to folder, Mark as read, Mark as unread, Flag, Unflag, or "Move to Junk" (i.e., report as spam).
Security precautions with the mobile Hotmail website
The main concern with checking your emails from a cell phone is losing that device: while it is convenient to automatically sign into Hotmail (whether from Windows Live mobile or the regular Hotmail), it becomes a concern on a cell phone you may well lose in a public place. If your cell phone or smartphone is password-protected, or can be remotely wiped out, access to Hotmail account is much more secure; if you want to stay on the safe side, scroll all the way to the bottom of any screen, and manually logout by clicking on the "Sign out" link: this means that the next time you access mobile Hotmail, you'll have to enter your credentials, and will not be automatically logged in to your inbox.
New Hotmail, MSN Hotmail, Windows Live Hotmail & Live email are all referring to the same free webmail service offered by Microsoft and Windows Live Team (works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X). Microsoft Corporation, Apple, and other companies own the copyright or trademark to these and other terms mentioned.