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Microsoft Office for Android phones gets a new look and features

Microsoft Office for Android phones gets a new look and features

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Microsoft is bringing a new look and features to its Office mobile apps for Android phones today. After launching an Android tablet version in January, the new Office apps for Android phones look very similar. They’re also nearly identical to the iOS version available on the iPhone, and designed with the same features in mind.

While the tablet versions allow you to get a fair amount of editing done without a keyboard and mouse, the phone editions are really for basic and quick edits. Microsoft is using the same editing interface at the bottom of the display, with options to easily change fonts and styling in Word. For Excel those options are designed for quick cell changes, and PowerPoint is largely optimized for simple changes to slide transitions. Just like iOS, all three apps offer native Dropbox integration to store and open documents, or Microsoft’s own OneDrive cloud storage.

Microsoft is allowing Android users to preview Office for phones today, with a full release expected later this year. With this new preview, Microsoft has now successfully updated iOS and Android users to a new version of Office ahead of a release on Windows Phone. The software maker only just started previewing a phone version of Office for Windows 10 last week, but it requires device owners to upgrade their entire OS to a largely unstable preview version of Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft is aiming to release Office for Windows 10 Mobile by the end of the year, just in time for new Lumia devices and the holiday season.