Mary Jo already posted about the release of Office for Android smartphones and Larry offered up his thoughts on the new software . Since I previously posted a side-by-side gallery of Office Mobile for the iPhone compared to the native Office Mobile client on Windows Phone 8 I wanted to also give you a look at Office Mobile for Android smartphones.

As you can see in this short screenshot gallery, Microsoft was able to bring the same experience seen on Windows Phone 8 devices and the iPhone to Android smartphones. Given that Android smartphones have the largest displays of these three smartphone platforms, I think users may find the Android version the most useful of all.

A key difference between what I have on my new Nokia Lumia 1020 and what we get with the iPhone and Android phones is that an Office 365 subscription is required on iOS and Android while Windows Phone owners get native Office without requiring the service.

I am running Office Mobile on my fantastic HTC One, I still believe it is the best smartphone I have ever used , and it looks great. I felt squeezed by the small iPhone display, but that is not the case on the 1080p 4.7 inch HTC One display. The layout for some editing tools and menus are a bit different on each platform and I personally find that iOS and Android are a bit more refined and user friendly.

Those of us who have been around the mobile world for a while will remember paying upwards of $50 for applications that allowed us to work with word documents and spreadsheets and I remember long discussions and comparisons about getting chart support in those apps. Office Mobile on today's modern smartphones functions well and is an incredible value for those who need native Office support.

It is nice to have Office functionality on all my different smartphones and while some people are happy with services like Google Docs or even the new Quip word processor nothing beats having the ability to jump in and edit native Office files. Microsoft is a software company at its core and I think this is a smart move to finally get Office on all mobile platforms.