Nokia updated Mail for Exchange to 2.0 last summer. Version 2.1 of this free software, which allows owners of some of Nokia's Symbian/S60-run smartphones to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers, is now available.

Mail for Exchange leverages Microsoft's ActiveSync technology (available in Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and later) to enable synchronization of your Microsoft Inbox mail folder, calendar and contacts between Microsoft Exchange servers and mobile devices.

The most significant addition to this minor upgrade is added support for a couple of new Nseries models. So in addition to supporting all Nokia Eseries phones, Mail for Exchange is now compatible with the N73, N76, N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95 and N96 8GB as well.

Enhancements in 2.1 include the automatic configuration of the heartbeat interval, which is used to maintain a connection to the Exchange server. Because this setting is no longer static, the software will now attempt to find the best value for the data connection being used.

Also, the Company Directory (supporting Global Address lookup) feature of Mail for Exchange is now available as a standalone application

Keep in mind; upgrading from any previous version to Mail for Exchange 2.0 or 2.1 requires that you perform a Full Resync. This is required to utilize the new Task synchronization feature. To do this, start with the Mail for Exchange application and select Options > Full resync on your smartphone.

A couple of months ago, Quickoffice's added support for Mail for Exchange 2.0 to its mobile office suite Quickoffice Premier 4.5. The company said this provides seamless access to attachments (Microsoft Word, Excel & PowerPoint) files through a new ‘Mail for Exchange’ view directly inside the Quickoffice application.

And, in related news, Nokia Nseries Suite 2.0 is now available in beta. The software is a collection of Nokia Nseries and third-party PC applications that link these multimedia smartphones a PC. You can use the applications to transfer photos or videos from your device to your PC, to copy your music from your PC to your device or to synchronize your calendar and contact information and more.