Google Beefs Up Google Drive for iOS, Android

Google on Monday updated its Google Drive app for iOS devices, adding editing and collaboration tools for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users that are already present in the Google Drive app for Android.

The search giant also added some new features to Google Drive for Android. The updated iOS app is available in Apple's App Store and the latest version for Android smartphones and tablets is available in Google's Play Store.

Google Drive was released this past April as the formal cloud-based service wrapped around the company's Google Docs office suite. The file storage and synchronization service provides users with 5GB of free storage capacity, with additional capacity available for a monthly subscription fee that charges $2.49 per additional 25GB of cloud storage.

Google Drive 1.01 for iOS now lets users create new Google documents, edit them, and format text in Google docs, according to Google senior product manager Anil Sabharwal, who announced the updates on the official Google blog. Those features had already been present in Google Drive for Android.

Users of Apple mobile devices will also now be notified of other people's edits of Google Docs in real-time, he wrote. That's a feature that has been available in Google Drive for PC users from the start.

The improvement to Google Drive for iOS goes beyond just documents—iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users are now able to create folders and move files between via the app, and upload media like photos and videos to Google Drive from their devices. Google's presentation software has also been integrated into the new version of Google Drive. Users of iOS devices can now view presentations on their smartphones and tablets, plus look at speaker notes, switch to full-screen mode, and swipe between slides, Sabharwal wrote.

For all of the additions to the iOS app, Google managed to keep users of devices running its own Android mobile operating system ahead of the curve. Owners of Android-based handsets and tablets running the Google Drive app can "now add comments, reply to existing comments, and view tables in your Google documents," Sabharwal wrote.

The new presentation features for the iOS app are also present in the updated Android app, he added.

Sabharwal promised future additions to Google Drive for mobile devices, including "native editing and real-time collaboration for Google spreadsheets."

For a breakdown of the new features in Google Drive for iOS and Android devices, check out the video below. For more, see PCMag's full reviews of Google Drive and Google Drive for iPad.

Source : pcmag