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

Re:Free?

[ledow]

Limited functionality unless you have an Office 365 account you can sign into to unlock all the features.

Re:104Mb

[MightyMartian]

Why would I want to use either on a phone or smaller tablet?

That's really the point here. Full-pop word processors are not only going to take up huge amounts of limited flash storage and RAM, but they aren't even necessary.

I use Google's document, spreadsheet and slideshow offerings on my Nexus 5 and Nexus 7. They don't render every aspect of an Office document, though they are getting a lot better (Excel charts display pretty well in Sheets), but I'm really just looking for "good enough", in this case mainly reading, and maybe a very small amount of notation or editing. I'll go to my PC or notebook if I actually want to full blown spreadsheet work or composition. Even with a fully functional version of Word available for my smart devices, I wouldn't pay for the functionality because I'm not a masochist.