If you’re like me you’re a huge fan of Google Docs and find them to be perfect for creating, editing and sharing documents.
I started using Google Docs and Spreadsheets in 2006 and almost immediately asked for mobile doc editing. With the iPhone on its way, this only made sense. In October 2007 Google gave us read-only access to mobile versions of docs, spreadsheets (and even presentations) but that wasn’t enough — users also wanted to edit their Docs on the go.
A couple years later (in February 2009) Google added the ability to edit (and sort and filter) spreadsheets — not docs — from a mobile device. This only solved part of the problem though. I have 10 times more docs than I do spreadsheets (as I suspect many others do) so I mostly want Google Docs editing on my iPhone. Spreadsheets? Not so much.
Today Google answered my prayers and rolled out a new documents editor in Docs and Spreadsheets that supports editing on mobile browsers, including Safari on the iPhone and iPad.
Now when you visit docs.google.com from a supported device (iOS 3+, Android 2.2+) simply touch one of your docs to view it, then touch the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor.
Mobile gDoc editing is an excellent, albeit a little late, feature.
I bet that the announcement has a lot of developers of notes and lists apps worried about how Google’s free service could devalue paid apps with similar features.
Here’s a video of mobile editing in action:
At around the 00:51 mark the narrator demos a key feature when he dictates a sentence directly into Google Docs. Android’s systemwide voice recognition is a major feature that isn’t available in iOS. While voice recognition is available on iOS in individual apps (like Dragon etc.), Android’s systemwide support for voice has a major advantage.
