Category: Microsoft

One of the biggest benefits to Android as a platform is its flexibility.  Google, much to their credit, has made it very easy for developers – including companies that compete with them – to produce apps for Android to sell or give away.  Microsoft, much to their credit too, has taken advantage of this openness.  The Redmond, Washington company as certainly competed with Google and more directly Android but equally, have produced great apps that allow you to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem without too much pain.  In fact, really no pain.

If you are new to Android but your personal and/or work life is surrounded by Microsoft applications, take heart.  You will find that Android is more than capable of giving you a rich, powerful Microsoft experience without the sacrifices in other areas.  I’m of course referring to Windows Phone.  Clearly the Microsoft experience on Windows Phone was outstanding but even the apps on that now all-but-dead platform lacked when you compared them to those for Android or even iOS.

In this How To I’m going to highlight some of the key apps from Microsoft that will make your Android phone (and in most cases tablets) a solid performing and excellent user experience for those who have their digital work or personal lives in Office 365, OneDrive and other apps.  While those apps are expected, it is the other apps that Microsoft offers that may be a surprise to you.

Today’s Deal over at Amazon is on the Microsoft Office 365 Home subscription.  Normally $99.99, it is down to $84.99 at the online retailer.  The Home edition of Office 365 allows you to install the Office suite of apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote – on up to 5 PCs or Mac (any combination) and also comes with 1TB of OneDrive storage for your files and photos.  That 1TB of storage applies to all users on the subscription so each will get 1TB.  It’s a pretty sweet deal on the flagship Office offering from Microsoft.

If you already have a subscription, you can still take advantage of this deal.  When you get the subscription card shipped to you, just go to your Office account and add it to your existing subscription. This will just push out your renewal date another year.

Add to this, with the Home subscription, you get full access to the Android and iOS versions of the Office apps.  These apps are free on both platforms but to get all of the features, you have to have a subscription.

Today’s Deal is on the physical subscription card being shipped to you (it’s Prime eligible so it won’t cost you anything if you are a member) and not on the download version.  That version is still $99.

Check it out at Amazon

Microsoft has begun rolling out an update to Next Lock Screen for Android phones that brings a lot of new improvements and features.  Probably the biggest new feature in the version 2.7 release is the ability to swipe down and search (via Bing or Google) right from the lock screen.  This makes searching for things faster and easier as you don’t necessarily have to unlock your phone every time to search for something.

This update also brings customization to the layout of apps page in the app.  Now you can select 4×5 or 4×6 for your app layout to give you the number of apps you want to see and quickly access.

Microsoft is rolling out a nice update to their lock screen app, Next Lock Screen, that brings a lot of improvements to the app.  The biggest new feature in the app, which is now up to version 3.10.3 for those keeping score, is the expansion of fingerprint scanner support to a much wider range of Android phones.  The support for fingerprint scanners has been in the app for a few months now but it was very limited on the number of devices that it would work on.  Indeed most people didn’t even know it was there in the app.  This update greatly expands the number of devices that can now use the scanner to unlock the phone.  In testing it this morning, it works on my Nexus 6P and my Nextbit Robin, two devices that were not supported in the previous release.

Some eleven months after it was made available for iOS users, Microsoft Selfie has finally hit the Google Play Store for Android devices.  The app is aimed at giving you some filtering options for photos you take with the app or selfies that you have in your camera roll.  While the selfie camera app-meets-filter app is not something new, this app does a pretty good job.  With each filter in the app you can adjust the intensity and there are 12 different filters that you can apply to your photos.  There is also a preview button that you can tap and hold to see the photo with and without the applied filter.

Microsoft has released an update to their digital notebook app, OneNote, that adds a lot of new features.  The update is build is version 16.0.7369.1775 for those keeping score at home and like version number Bingo.  While it has the usual smattering of bug fixes and performance improvements, there are also some big feature changes to this update.  First, the app now supports multi-window use in Android Nougat.  To this point, if you tried to use OneNote in multi-window, it simply would not open.  That’s a thing of the past now and you can have the app and another app open at the same time on the screen on your phone or tablet.

Another big improvement in this update is the ability to open password-protected sections.  On the desktop version of OneNote, you can password protect those sections with sensitive information.  Previously the Android app (and iOS app for that matter) wouldn’t open up those sections.  That’s fixed and now you can open them although you still cannot create a password protected section within the app.  Support for inserting and viewing embedded files in your notes has also been added in this update.