Google Docs goes mobile

By Josh Lowensohn on 18 October 2007, 11:26am

Crave US: Google yesterday unveiled Google Docs mobile. It's a smaller, lightweight version of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which lets you browse any stored documents, spreadsheets or presentations on your mobile phone.

Like the mobile version of their calendaring service, Google has spent a considerable amount of time optimising Docs for the iPhone -- making items larger, and more finger friendly. iPhone users are also the only group who gets mobile access to the freshly launched presentations service, which shows up in thumbnail form with simplistic back-and-forth controls.

Both services share a similar lack of editing options, as you can't go in and make changes to an item that's already been created. I'll give a small nod to Google Calendar mobile for at least letting you add an item with the 'quick add' feature.

Google says it's working on an edit function, but provided no time frame on when we'll be seeing that. In comparison to other efforts -- most notably by EditGrid and Zoho, developers are proving you can in fact add extensive editing functionality to mobile apps while keeping some form of user-friendly UI and speed using over-the-air data.

Many of these mobile apps have been iPhone-centric, despite the larger portion of mobile users on other platforms. It will be interesting to see where Google puts their focus, especially with the rumoured Gphone (possibly) right around the corner.

Speaking of which, we had a peek at Nokia's new mobile offerings yesterday. The company claims its new N810 Wi-Fi enabled tablet is "great" for browsing and making edits to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. With the Palm Foleo's demise, we're looking forward to getting our hands on this thing too. -Josh Lowensohn