Despite early criticisms of the iPad as a device for content consumption rather than creation, a wide range of third-party productivity solutions continue to flourish in the App Store. One of newer kids on this block is Polaris Office, a suite from Korean developer Infraware promising to bring the Microsoft Office experience to iOS for cheap (currently $9.99; regularly $19.99).
Better known on the Android platform where it’s preinstalled on select carrier-branded handsets, Polaris Office made the leap to iOS this year with an all-in-one solution for viewing and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents on the go. The app is universal, so users get phone and tablet versions with a single purchase. Overall, Infraware has done a fine job porting the app to iOS. The user interface for viewing and editing documents works well even on the iPhone, featuring a pulldown menu for key functions and the ability to switch to full-screen with a tap.
Getting to that point is a mixed bag, however. The main menu features four large, gaudy icons for browsing files, and one of them -- Settings -- offers little except for turning on file extensions or connecting with Facebook and Twitter. Polaris Office becomes cloud storage-capable by adding accounts under the Browser icon, but just barely. There’s no iCloud support, but Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, and WebDAV are present and accounted for.
Unfortunately, die-hard Google Docs users may not want to rely on the feature quite yet. Opening our simple Google-hosted spreadsheets revealed data missing entirely on several columns. The same files opened from the Google Drive app and sent to Polaris instead imported a ZIP file, which decompressed into a blank “resources” folder. Thankfully, iTunes File Sharing and the remaining cloud services worked as expected.
The bottom line. While we prefer Apple’s modular approach to separate iWork apps, iOS users with multiple devices who need all three solutions will find Polaris Office worth the investment. The developer needs to add some additional cloud storage options and refine the user interface a bit more, but otherwise Polaris Office is worth a look for those on a budget.
of 5
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 5.0 or later
Good value for the money inside a single app. Document viewing or editing is fast and efficient. Includes wide variety of document templates.
Limited cloud storage options (no iCloud, SkyDrive, or SugarSync). Data from Google Dogs often incomplete or missing entirely. Doesn't support iPhone 5 display.
MacAddict4Life
October 16, 2012 at 12:53am
Have you used Office2 or Quickoffice? Is this app any better? Why?
