Home » Amazon Apps » Google Docs' New Official App Hits the Android Market

Google Docs' New Official App Hits the Android Market

Posted by Dana Rock on Apr 28, 2011 in Amazon Apps, Android Apps, Office | 1 comment

Save $80 on the Motorola Triumph Android Phone at Virgin Mobile!

Google finally unveiled the “missing link” to their Android app collection — Google Docs. Any Google account you have integrated in your Android device you can access just as easy as it is in your Gmail account.

This is one major positive to Google’s official apps — They are made to work with your Android at a much more integrated level than most other apps. Since your phone runs from a Google account, it stands to reason that Google would have the up shot of that market.

Surprisingly, this is the first appearance of an official Google Docs app for Android. Being as popular as it is, and as essential to many schools, businesses, and households, I would have expected something like this a long time ago. There has been, to be fair, a mobile website we could access that let us view some of our docs and create text files. This official release lets you do a lot more than that!

Features, as stated from the Android Market:

• Create, edit, upload and share your documents with the Google Docs app.

• Designed for Android to save you time finding your docs * Edits to your documents appear to collaborators in seconds* Make quick changes to spreadsheets* View your documents, PDFs, images and more. Upload and convert files to the Google DTake a photo of printed text and convert it to a Google document* Share docs with your phone’s contacts

There is some criticism that this app appears to be just the “mobile site” repackaged. To some extent this is true, but there are a few important differences I see when looking at them side by side.

• First, the website version does not integrate with Google accounts already existing on your phone. This means that typing in email and password for each account you want access is a required price for admission. The Google Docs App, on the other hand, will integrate with the accounts already on your phone without any additional typing. This alone is enough for me to use it, having 7 Google accounts myself to keep track of for different parts of my life and career.

• Second, the creation menu in the app has one more option than the web version. Both versions can create documents and spreadsheets, but only the official Google Docs app can integrate with your phone’s camera, take a picture, and then convert that over to a Google Doc.

• Third, I tried turning off my phone’s wireless signals altogether by going into airplane mode just to see what sort of functionality the web interface and the official app interface would have with all connections to the “cloud” removed. As I predicted, the browser could do nothing with the information, but in the official app, I kept the ability to search my documents, but I could not create or view the documents without an internet connection.

An official app creates a starting point from which more awesome features can sprout that will take full advantage of maturing of the Android operating system and the rapidly increasing hardware abilities. In other words, the gap between what Google can do with the web version of this service will be limited if they want to support most phones that can access the web.

However, if they focus on making the app the best that it can be for a sweet flexible operating system like Android on some killer phones, then we may see the best Google Docs apps and features .

Ok, so TRY Google Docs, the Official Android App Today on your LG Optimus V.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you around!