Redmond, Washington — The most notable fruit of Microsoft and Nokia’s close collaboration is certainly the handsome line of Lumia Windows Phones, but the deal has had its share of fringe benefits as well. And now the software maker Microsoft has ported its Office productivity suite to run on a subset of Nokia handsets that use the Symbian operating system.
While developers out there are occupied churning out apps for more popular platforms like iOS and Android, it looks like Symbian got a little shot in the arm with the productivity love today from Microsoft in the form of the Microsoft Office Mobile apps.
Microsoft Office was originally conceived for Nokias’ series of Lumia Windows Phone devices, but as a result of their collaboration it seems like Microsoft has kept to their word last year when they announced that Microsoft Office Mobile would eventually make its way onto Symbian devices as well.
From an April 10 posting on the Nokia Conversations blog:
“Until now you could only get the full Microsoft Office Mobile app on Windows Phone, but not anymore. We are happy to announce that from today, the Nokia 701, Nokia 700, Nokia 603, Nokia E7, Nokia X7, Nokia C7, Nokia Oro, and Nokia C6-01 will also get this much sought after collection of productivity apps.
Moving forward, users of these models could download the software via the update tool on their smartphones or by connecting the phone via the Nokia Suite to your PC. Office Mobile would also be available from the Nokia Store “in a few weeks”.
Explaining the essentials of this new release in the following words, Nokia’s spokesman Dinesh Subramaniam said in a blog post: “Because these apps were conceivedby Microsoft, the functionalities are as close as possible–if not the same–to the Microsoft Office apps on your PC,” the post read
In fact, “There are a variety of third party apps or native apps on other platforms that go as far as allowing you to edit, but in my opinion, it is just not the same. “If you are working on a Word document, nothing beats using Microsoft’s own app,” added Subramaniam.
Nokia details the features available to Symbian device owners:
If you are using Word user, then you will find the usual Microsoft Office apps, such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, all of which have been optimized for viewing and usage on smartphones and smaller screens, and you will 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.
Moreover, in PowerPoint mobile, you can effortlessly edit your 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.
Under wraps, Nokia also plans to bring the productivity delights to a few more handsets, with devices like the Nokia N8, Nokia E6, and the Nokia 500 currently on the shortlist. Meanwhile, those of you lucky enough to consider purchasing the 808 PureView would not have to worry about software updates or app downloads at all–the full complement of Office apps will come preloaded on the hefty handset.