There has been series of heated debates and arguments on the infamous speech given by Steve Elop that Symbian is a burning platform. The death of Symbian has been proclaimed and now, the dying OS is still getting some love from Microsoft. If you are in love with Microsoft Office and you still use any of the Symbian devices, then it is getting more interesting. Editing and creating your office documents is now just your Symbian mobile device away.
According to Nokia Conversations, Nokia 701, Nokia 700, Nokia 603, Nokia E7, Nokia X7, Nokia C7, Nokia Oro, and Nokia C6-01 will now get this much sought after collection of productivity apps.
Why will Microsoft take the time to put together Microsoft Office for the platform if it is dead as proclaimed?
Even Steve Elop says Symbian will still get some love till 2016. Well, we are still in 2012 and that means we should expect some more interesting things to happen to the OS in the next four years. It is also interesting to note that the latest pure innovation to come out of Nokia, the Nokia Pureview, is a Symbian powered device, Nokia Belle.
What is special about Microsoft Office on your Symbian mobile device?
You may say there are a lot of third-party apps that are currently available for editing Microsoft Word documents, Excel and Powerpoint but the experience is certainly not the same. Until now, you could only get the full Microsoft Office Mobile app on Windows Phone, but not any more. Since February this year, OneNote, Lync 2010, Document Connection and PowerPoint Broadcast have been made available to the devices powered by the Symbian OS. So, what had changed? The new addition to the family are Word Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Excel Mobile. All these join the suite of Microsoft Apps built especially for the latest Symbian smartphones.
What can you do with the Microsoft Office Mobile Apps?
According to the statement by Nokia conversations,
“Office Mobile apps give you quick access to your documents so that you can get more done while on the go, or when you’re not using your laptop. And because these apps were created by Microsoft, the functionalities are as close as possible – if not the same – to the Microsoft Office apps on your PC.
If you’re a Word user, you’ll appreciate the fact that with Word mobile, you can save or send documents while preserving tables, SmartArt and charts, or the pinch/zoom functionality to easily view and edit documents.
In PowerPoint mobile, you can edit presentation texts and speaker notes, or use the Outline view to quickly browse through slides. With Excel mobile, you can create charts, or insert formulae and view rich data and charts from anywhere.
Another really convenient feature of Office Mobile is that it gives you a single view to documents – whether they’re stored on your phone as files, as email attachments, or on your company SharePoint site.”
Wait, this is not for everyone yet
My Nokia N8 is not among the Nokia devices that is getting the Microsoft Office Apps. But there is hope as it will be among those devices to be supported in the coming weeks. I was able to connect the Nokia 603 that was loaned to me by Nokia Connects and saw that there was an update via Nokia Suite on my PC. If you have any of the devices mentioned above, you can get the suite of the newly launched Microsoft Office Apps by connecting your phone to your PC or using Nokia Software Tool Updater on your phone.
