Google Docs App for Android: A First Look Review

Interface and widget

The app looks very simple and shares the feel of other Google apps, with a new colour scheme and smooth menu popups. Inside a document it still resembles the mobile website, so it was not much of an upgrade there. A widget lets you quickly upload a document or photo.

OCR for photos

You can upload a photo and turn on OCR to convert it into usable text. The web app even detected that the photo was rotated. The author wished it could turn business cards into contacts.

Editing

This was the letdown. Some documents did not show the Edit button, perhaps because the files were older versions. Most were editable, and PDFs could be viewed. Multitouch support worked well. Spreadsheet editing was still the old mobile style, where tapping a cell edits a whole row, with no support for frozen rows or columns. For work down a column, that is slow.

Sync, printing and sharing

• Sync. Background syncing of documents was available. The author questioned how necessary it was.
• Printing. Cloud Print worked, so the phone could send files to a printer elsewhere. There was no way to choose pages for a PDF, only all or nothing.
• Sharing. You can send a file or photo to your cloud and, where possible, convert it into a Docs file.

What was missing

• Folder navigation gets cluttered, as on the web app.
• The widget could not be edited, and settings offered only cache size and clearing it.
• Documents containing photos could not be edited, and editing forms was not possible.