Google Docs Now Native On Android

Google’s document service in the cloud has a new application for Android, which includes some great features.

Google Docs is now available as a native application for Android, giving users a lot of features not available through the Web browser. The application, available for free through the Android Market, provides an advanced interface to access documents and spreadsheets.

What are the advantages of an Google Docs Android app compared to a Web application? The Android application for Android comes with a lot of features such as:

Widget: The widget of Google Docs homepage allows users to access their favorite documents, create new documents, or take a phone via their smartphone and upload it to Google Docs.

Scan-to-text photo: The Google Docs app can use optical character recognition to convert new or existing photos into text documents. The technology is still in its infancy, so it does not recognize written words and some fonts.

Share with contacts: The native application allows you to share documents with your contact list from your Android phone with a few taps on the screen.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no online support for this app at this time. A user on Google’s forum  found out that the application includes a cache of up to 20 MB, and there is a “synchronization of documents” under the setting “Accounts and sync”. Perhaps the online support will be added in the future, but since the editor is being managed through the browser, it does not seem that this will happen anytime soon.

Google Docs is now available for Android versions 2.1 and higher.