Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Brings Office To Android Smartphones For Free

Posted by samzenpus on from the coming-together dept.

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.

4 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. 104Mb by ledow · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:104Mb by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Informative

      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

      --
      Good-bye
    2. Re:104Mb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    3. Re:104Mb by JamesTRexx · · Score: 4, Informative

      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?

      --
      home