Microsoft has released its Office Mobile App for Android devices. The app was made available on Google play store. This offering follows the release of an iPhone version back in June bringing Office app to phones running the most widely used operating system on smartphones.
The Android app is available for download free from Google Play, provided the Android smartphone is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or later. The bad, this app is only available on mobile devices and not on tablets nor Ipads.
As with the recently launched Office for iPhone app, users must be subscribers to the cloud-based Office 365 in order to create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, and then save these to SkyDrive. Else the app is almost useless and there is no option to upgrade to Office 365 when in the app
“The release of this app shows that we’re committed to keep providing additional value for Office 365 subscribers,” quoted by microsoft’s blog post. “Office 365 subscribers will now be able to access, view, and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents with Windows Phone, iPhone and Android phones.”
Just like the Windows Phone and iPhone versions, the editing functionality on the Android edition is very basic. It’s designed to simply be used for correction, formatting, and comments. Basic formatting like bold, italics, and font color options are supported, but beyond this it’s rather limited.
Documents are all stored on Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service, and can be shared via email using the Android app. One difference from the iPhone version is that there’s no option to purchase an Office 365 subscription within the app, replaced simply with a sign-in that requires users to already have an active subscription.
The Office app can only be downloaded by people living in the U.S. Microsoft expects to add more countries soon.
