Microsoft Brings Office To Android Smartphones For Free

Mark Wilson writes: After a few weeks in preview, Microsoft Office is now available for Android smartphones. Despite Microsoft's mobile-first, cloud-first philosophy, it has actually taken some time to bring the world's most popular office suite to Android phones — it joins the tablet version of the suite that was released last year. Just like the tablet editions, the phone versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint won't cost you a penny, allowing for the viewing and editing of a range of files when on the move. There is a cloud focus with support for not only OneDrive, but also Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box, and Microsoft says it has made changes based on the feedback received during the preview period.

Comments

104Mb

[ledow]

104Mb download just for Word on its own.

Wow. Seems like all those years of bloated coding are coming back to bite them.

Install office with very limited use on a mobile, and you lose half a Gig of internal storage on your smartphone and still might have to pay for an Office 365 subscription.

Re:104Mb

[spire3661]

I would like to point out Windows 8.1 can run on a 16 GB partition with 1 GB of ram. Further, MS has historically always pushed hardware.

What intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away

Re:104Mb

[nine-times]

I would like to point out Windows 8.1 can run on a 16 GB partition with 1 GB of ram.

It can. Theoretically. Just don't install applications or updates, and you might have space enough to run the system and store a few documents.

Re:104Mb

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean, "smaller"? Apple's Write for iOS is over 200Mb.

Re:104Mb

[JamesTRexx]

Windows 8.1 can run on a 16 GB partition with 1 GB of ram

Debian testing, Libreoffice, Eclipse, GIMP, Iceweasel, a whole bunch of other programs and utilities; 10G used on disk (including 2.3G home directory), about 1G RAM actively used of 3, the rest is cache.

No matter how you look at it, Microsoft has never been in the lean and mean camp. Neither with OS nor Office, database, virtualisation software.
Maybe open source development fosters a more efficient use of hardware by its nature?

Re:Free?

[ledow]

"Advanced features" like being able to write in a blank document, or change a character in an existing one.

Basically it's view-only unless you pay.

That's not so bad for smartphone, but absolutely no different to the tablet versions at all (which are effectively useless beyond being a free document viewer, which you can get thousands of).

Google Docs...

[DarthVain]

Or you could just use Google Docs in your browser. Unsurprisingly also supports Google Drive.

So MS makes a pointless app, and makes it free!

Re:Free?

[muirhead]

I've installed it to edit my CV. Most features are there, and I could open and edit a new blank doc. You need a Microsoft account to sign on, but an Office 365 subscription isn't needed. Who going to be worried about tracked changes whilst using a tablet?

Re:Google should move on

[MightyMartian]

That's odd. I can use Google Drive, create documents and spreadsheets on all the above platforms, download them in multiple formats and edit them on other platforms.

Why would I pay Microsoft money for that which I can already do?