Top Android news of the week: Cyanogen, Office and Outlook, LibreOffice coming
Big news this week in Android: Cyanogen wants to take Android from Google, Microsoft rolled out Office and Outlook for Android, and LibreOffice to hit soon.
Microsoft was busy this week, releasing Office for Android and Outlook. Office had been in preview for Android and is now in general release for free. An Office 365 subscription is required to unlock advanced features.
Just a short while after acquiring the good email app Acompli, Microsoft released it this week with the Outlook brand. The app is free and when I reviewed it on iOS found it to be a good solution for email.
The open-source LibreOffice has long been a favorite office suite for the open source crowd but hasn't been released for Android. That's changing, as reports of an Android version in the works surfaced this week.
Development work to port the suite to Android has been assigned to two companies. No completion date has been mentioned, but the developers said key foundations of the suite should be finished in March of this year.
The company behind the most popular custom ROM for Android wants to distance the mobile OS from Google. In a way the company has already been competing with Google with its Cyanogenmod version of Android. This started with a deal to have Cyonegen;s fork of Android preinstalled on the OnePlus One handset and an Indian handset maker's phones.
This week the CEO of Cyanogen stated he wants to distance Android from Google by having his version as a totally open OS, including Google's own apps currently not available to other developers.
The folks in Redmond think Cyanogen's taking Android from Google is a good thing, and it's reported the company will invest in Cyanogen. Microsoft is reportedly to be a minor investor in Cyanogen's $70 million funding round.
Neither Microsoft nor Cyanogen has confirmed this report of the upcoming investment.
