SoftMaker has been making office software for mobile apps for a very long time. The company’s Windows Mobile apps offer some of the best support for Microsoft Office documents you’ll find on any mobile device. But SoftMaker Office was originally designed back when mobile phones and PDAs were meant to be used with a stylus. Now the company is retooling the office suite for use on finger-friendly Android phones and tablets.
SoftMaker Office for Android has been in private beta testing for months, but GottaBeMobile’s KT Bradford took a recent build for a spin to see how the word processing app TextMaker handles a large, complex Word document with track changes.
As it turns out, the answer is pretty well. The app was able to detect all changes, jump from one to the next, and accept or reject changes. New changes can also be tracked, and users can leave comments — although there’s currently no easy way to search for comments or view existing comments.
SoftMaker Office for Android will also include the PlanMaker spreadsheet app and a Presentations app. The company continues to offer apps for Windows Mobile and Windows CE as well as desktop software for Windows and Linux. The Android app will be the first version of SoftMaker Office for non-Microsoft mobile operating systems.
There’s a good chance it will be the most advanced office suite available for Android once it launches… but it may not come cheap. SoftMaker Office for Windows Mobile costs nearly $80.
I actually have an older copy of Softmaker Office’s word processor (Called “TextMaker”) that I use as my primary word processor on my netbook; their software makes for a really nice lightweight full-featured office suite.
They give away an older release of their office suite at softmakeroffice.com as a teaser to get people to buy their newer suite; at that price it’s worth trying out.