QuickOffice for the iPhone is the new hot Document viewer/editor just released on the iTunes AppStore. It does everything, except a few things you may not want to live without. And, it doesn’t follow the iPhone built in text features that will bite you every time you type.
The QuickOffice folks provided their Quicksheet spreadsheet app a while ago. I use it daily because it is so fast to create spreadsheets with and it’s full suite of features. Most spreadsheets I create are for sorting a bit of information with equations from time to time. I have also produced a full 13 month business plan when stuck in an airport and the Macbook had a dead battery.
When QuickOffice (a single app that has Quicksheet and Quickword in one) showed up, I grabbed a copy hoping to have the same success with text document creations and editing. I should not have been surprised by it’s shortcomings as they are similar to the issues I had with the application on my Palm device. The QuickOffice folks do not believe that all the features built into the OS should be followed. Two that will catch you out every time you type a text note: If you tap the shift key on the keyboard, it locks on, not unlocking after the single character capitalization. Also, double space at the end of a sentence does not create a period and auto capitalize the first letter. Not as much of an issue but ‘different’ is the lack of the magnifying glass when you tap on text to insert the curser – QuickOffice enlarges the whole page causing much of it to disappear off the screen.
That said, the feature list of QuickOffice is amazing! Undo/Redo, copy/paste, Auto-Save/Auto-Restore, bullets, fonts (Bold, Italic, Color, Highlight and format). You can create Word Docs, folders, and manage your files amongst the folders. If you want to just view files without editing, you can do with all the usual file types (except iWork 2009 – what did Apple do to those files that everyone is having issues supporting?).
Moving files on/off of your iPhone can be done via WiFi to a computer on the same network. This is done pretty easily via a Web browser, no additional desktop app is needed. If you have a MobileMe account, you can move files to/from that online storage too. Promised to be in the next version (free upgrade) is the ability to email your work – I really need this feature, the competition has it!
QuickOffice got my 19 dollars before I found out about the limitations. Mad? No! Time will tell how much trouble it is to switch between the iPhone text features vs the QuickOffice opinion how things should work. Meanwhile, I can open, edit, and save Word docs for a meeting in the time it takes the elevator to buzz through 20 floors every morning.