Microsoft Brings Office To Android Smartphones For Free 85
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.
Re:Free? (Score:5, Interesting)
Limited functionality unless you have an Office 365 account you can sign into to unlock all the features.
Re: (Score:2)
But the average person likely only cares about viewing and simple editing tasks which can be done without the Office 365 subscription.
Re:Free? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or Office for that matter.
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Free means no charge and there are no ads. You only pay if you want to use advanced features that you need to have an Office 365 subscription to unlock.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"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).
Re:Free? (Score:4, Informative)
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"Sign in with a free Microsoft account to create, edit and save documents for home use. A qualifying Office 365 subscription is required to create, edit and save documents for business use."
And... "1. INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.
a. Consumer Use. You may install and use one copy of the software on Android Phone devices you own or control in order to view existing documents. As allowed by the software, you may also create, edi
Re:Free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not correct.
You might need to learn the difference between "Not correct" and "Pretty much exactly what you said, but I don't like it so I'm going to make a big deal where such is not warranted".
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Sorry you don't like my post, but that doesn't make it any less correct.
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To quote muirhead:
Most features are there, and I could open and edit a new blank doc.
You are the one who has created the straw man, stretching "most features are there" into "fully-features other than obscure features like version tracking".
You also seem to be assuming that muirhead was talking about the commercial version. He never stated that or indicated it in any way. The average user, by far, would be subject to the consumer edition and not the commercial one, so this is also quite a stretch you made.
It's not about whether I like your post, or whether you provided u
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b) If you were talking about the PC, I'd agree the average user would be non-commercial. However, we're not talking about the PC, we're talking about a phone version. You know who uses Office on their phone? Business folk who are trying to travel light. You know who doesn't typically use Office on their phone, and who if by some rare chance does
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No, they (MS) are not. And no, the poster (GP) implied no such thing. They are very quotable, if you would care to show us what you think implied any of that then please do demonstrate it to the class (with the applicable quotes). Also, show the stats that demonstrate which type of users are using the mobile version as I suspect you are making that up as well. In other words, I can find no evidence to support anything you said - not one thing. That is pretty bad, you should couch your FUD with some reality
104Mb (Score:5, 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.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, no kidding. Both Android and iOS have brought us smaller, leaner apps which take up far less space.
Microsoft still wants to give us fat x86 binaries.
Oh well, it's not like I'd be running this anyway.
Once again, Microsoft is so heavily stuck in the "I'm a PC and he's a Mac" mindset they're incapable of looking past Office and Exchange.
Good innovating there, Microsoft. The killer mobile app isn't a fucking Power Point slide
Re:104Mb (Score:5, Informative)
What intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away
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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 (Score:5, Informative)
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?
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I could tell you, but then you'd get a visit from people with a very dark fashion sense.
Then again, you might be lucky and get psychologically scarred for life.
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This is not meant to be derogatory. Maybe OSS got its start with older, second-hand, computers? Personally, except for work, I made use of the various Linux distributions on older hardware, stuff that I had replaced with a new system, before I made the move to convert my regular computer. I also continued to use those systems, the older ones, longer than I would have had I not done so - which means I wrote code on them as well as used them for regular tasks. This may be an additional factor, though I doubt
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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
The requirements have been the same from Vista- Windows 8.1. Hardware with those specs will run reasonably the same from Vista (SP2) through to Windows 8.1.
I found it isn't Microsoft that taketh, as much as: Symantec, McAfee, Adobe, Firefox, and Google (Chrome).
Further on Firefox and Chrome is web developers and websites takething more. On a 9 year old Windows PC that used to function very well, replacing nothing but the web browser, and plugins (like Flash) it is almost unusable on many websites. This isn'
Re:104Mb (Score:5, Informative)
What do you mean, "smaller"? Apple's Write for iOS is over 200Mb.
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Once again, Microsoft is so heavily stuck in the "I'm a PC and he's a Mac" mindset they're incapable of looking past Office and Exchange.
Well, do you know how much money they are making from Office and Exchange?
Re:104Mb (Score:4, Funny)
Thank God! Can you imagine how big the binary would have to be with all those statically linked .NET libraries?
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IIRC, a typical large Xamarin app contains about 20 Mb of framework code before the linker strips everything that isn't actually used. This usually get reduced to several times less after linking. So in this case, I doubt you'd notice the difference.
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The drivers are terrible and the bug reporting system is ignored.
Re: 104Mb (Score:1)
You dumbo. C# apps are quite compact. Even the runtime isn't that large.
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Not to mention that you're talking about low-end phones, which are always designed to hit the minimum specs. If you want bigger/faster, then you need to pony up for phones like the iPhone6 or Galaxy S6 which come with 64GB and 128GB options.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Android should allow apps to be installed on the SD card then. I think they used to. Did they bring back that feature yet? Maybe MS Word functionality doesn't mean a lot to you, but for many people, that's a small amount of space to give up if it actually supports viewing and editing files in a way that's compatible with the desktop versions.
Also, my copy of OpenOffice is 316 MB installed. Why would Microsoft be expected to use less space just because it runs on a phone? If it really is full featur
Re:104Mb (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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My phone has an HDMI port on it and it also support bluetooth keyboards. Why should I not be able to hook it up to a fullsize screen and keyboard to do a little bit of work if my phone has the capabilities? Phones are coming out with 3GB or more of RAM on them now, and Octocore processors. Probably won't be too long before we just plug our phones into docking stations and use them as a full computer for basic tasks like web browsing or word processing. I plug my tablet into my TV to play games, and I'm qui
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Android should allow apps to be installed on the SD card then. I think they used to. Did they bring back that feature yet?
Yes. Some apps refuse to be moved, however, even user apps. Some of them will work if you move them forcibly, with Ti Backup. Others need to be moved with more care, to an ext formatted partition on your sd card which — I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong — I believe is now supported only on third-party roms.
With that said, I have access to all three methods on my titan running SOKP, and I can't imagine why anyone would run a stock ROM for long anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
104Mb download just for Word on its own.
Thats not unusual these days. Almost all Android applications are getting pretty bloated. On my Android 5.1.1 phone, Chrome is 101 Mb, Facebook is 200 Mb, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are 70 Mb a piece and even a simple forum viewer for Whirlpool is 10 Mb.
Long gone are the days of applications being under 1 Mb. Seems like more than just 3 years ago though.
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.
That being true, this move is a clear sign that Microsoft is fearing the other office compatible products on Android, especially since Google have be
Mb!=MB - Re:104Mb (Score:1)
Freemium ain't free (Score:1)
While you can download the apps for free, you get a lite version of the apps. To get full functionality, you have to have a paying subscription to Office 365.
Even more ways to destroy my files! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Considering how poorly files move between different versions of Office for the same platform (and some times even between the same version for the same platform!)
I've seen this troll many times but never once in practice. Can you give me a concrete example that is easily reproducible or would affect a majority of users?
Re: (Score:2)
Considering how poorly files move between different versions of Office for the same platform (and some times even between the same version for the same platform!)
Can you give me a concrete example that is easily reproducible or would affect a majority of users?
I have personally lost files many times in office when I took a file from one PC to another, even when they are running the same version. Powerpoint is the worst offender, but I have lost Word documents as well. Recently my boss sent me a Powerpoint presentation that he made in Powerpoint for Mac and I had to deliver it in the latest version of Powerpoint for windows at a departmental seminar; I ended up with the distinction of being the first person to crash Powerpoint that day.
That distinction might
Anyone else finding Office2013 slow? (Score:1)
Google Docs... (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Why do I need the vendor lock-in? (Score:3)
I do not develop big complicated documents on my phone.
For my phone, a standard text editor is more than enough.
If somebody emails a .docx file, I'll wait until I am on a computer with LibreOffice.
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Oh, they will be complicated after you make them in MS-Office.
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It's not bad to have a viewer app that'll render Word/Excel/Powerpoint properly though...
Lemonade, bell-bottoms, and newspapers (Score:1)
Ah, the sweet nostalgia of BSOD on my smartphone.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
... as that would show the absolutely low quality of their code
What is directly known about Microsoft code doesn't support your argument. For example, after the Windows 2000 code leak several people did their own analysis of the code. For example, kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] concluded:
In short, there is nothing really surprising in this leak. Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.
Note that last sentence: Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility.
More recently, static code analysis was done on the legally released Word for Windows 1.1a by PVS-Studio [viva64.com]. They concluded:
I have found very few strange fragments. There are two reasons for that. Firstly, I found the code to be skillfully and clearly written. Secondly, the analysis had to be incomplete, while teaching the analyzer the specifics of the old C language wouldn't be of any use.
In short, there may be many reasons n
Google should move on (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, Microsoft have a Cloud interface that works on all platform (Win, IOS, OSX, Linux), Google don't.
Now, Microsoft have a Office suite that works on all platform (WIn, Ios, Osx, Linux) Google don't.
It's amazing how a year change in the software market. Yesterday google was the leader, now they aren't there.
Re:Google should move on (Score:4, Informative)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
So other than your paranoia, there is no actual advantage.
And before you start talking about "staying on the device", I had to go and actively disable all the Skydrive crap on my notebook, so they're all playing that game.
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Windows 10 may very well kill Android on the tablet. I have a very nice Android tablet but I seldom turn it on at all since I got this Asus Transformer with x86 Windows 8,1 on it. Everything is crippled on a toy OS.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm surprised Windows 8 hasn't already killed Android on tablets. Guess it takes people a while to realize how bad Android is. I have a Surface 2 RT, and the OS itself is so much better than Android. It's a shame developers didn't latch on to the Windows app store more. It's truly a joy to use this device. Android really is quite crippled. No native support for multiple apps. No native support for Google Drive (developer has to write their own code to support it). No native support for network shares. Does
Re: (Score:1)
I agree with you, but you only have to check out all the comments on here on why Windows on a tablet isn't more popular. Microsoft gives away free Office and all they get here is hate. These are the nerds non-technical people turn to when they're looking to buy tech. And almost all of them on here hate Microsoft because of something that happened from 20 years ago or because it's not Linux. Microsoft could open source everything tomorrow and these haters would still go on with their tired "it's a trap!" bul
And? (Score:2)
I was creating Word and Excel documents, for free as they were included in the OS, more than a decade ago on my trusty iPaq 6315.
Why is this news?
Do Not Get! (Score:1)
See subject.
(Pretty simple, really.)
Thanks but no thanks (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not buying it.
Our patent system is broken, and msft is exploiting it, simple as that.
If somebody stole a real invention that would be one thing. But we both know that msft patents have almost nothing to do with real inventions.
What did Microsoft really invent? What did Apple really invent? Yet they have patents by the thousands.
Re: (Score:3)
Free? (Score:2, Insightful)
With all the money that Microsoft charges for patents used by Android, I'd hardly call it free.
It's a trap! (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is just trying to get everybody locked in to their proprietary format.
That's Free as in Lunch (Score:1)