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Mobile Document Viewer (Free)
Tested version: 1.5.2
Latest version: 1.10.2
Requires Android: from 1.6
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Summary
Mobility is super important to smartphone and/or tablet users. Being able to access documents while one is out and about is also something a lot of users are keen to be able to do. Mobile Document Viewer (Free) is the type of app that will allow you to do just that. More details in today’s review.
Features & Use
Test device
Samsung Nexus S
Android Version: 2.3.4
Root: No
Modifications: None
App details:
Runs as of: Android 1.6
Apps2SD: Yes
Permissions: Network communication, your location, phone calls
The dawn of electronic documents brought with it a great variety of formats. Microsoft Office is probably still the best known format, followed closely by PDF and Open Document. PDFs are great as they aren’t dependant on any platforms – i.e. regardless of whether you’re working with Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android or Windows Phone. There are plenty of programmes for PDFs and we’ve tested a few of them for you; Acrobat Reader by Adobe is the most well known and they are also the creators of the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Let me say right off the bat that unfortunately Mobile Document Viewer (Free) does not support PDFs, but as I mentioned, there’s a great viewer for PDFs by Adobe, if that’s any consolation. So what can the Mobile Document Viewer do? Well, it does Microsoft Office Documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, d.h. Word, Excel and PowerPoint), editor files (.txt), .csv and OpenOffice as well as LibreOffice files. We are especially happy that the app supports free file formats—definitely a major bonus point for Mobile Document Viewer!
Which brings us to a problem that basically every mobile document viewer faces: formatting. Don’t expect to find correct formatting, you will be disappointed (if you’ve used other document viewer apps you’ll know what to expect). Murphy’s Law seems to be the order of the day: some documents were mighty jumbled up, but quite a few of them were near to perfect. However, if you’re looking for really good formatting you should probably consider PDFs. On the other hand, if you simply need to look at a few documents whilst you’re on the go Mobile Document Viewer is a good one to have.
Cool function: the memory can be combed through manually, but you can also let Mobile Document Viewer do the job for you. The help function is useful and explains all of the app’s major functions.
Bottom line:
Formatting is an issue with Mobile Document Viewer, as it is with every document viewer. That being said, free documents support is a big plus. Too bad it isn’t possible to view PDFs, but oh well, most users will already have installed an app that allows them to do just that. All in all: a useful app that’s definitely worth taking a closer look at.
Screen & Controls
Admittedly, Mobile Document Viewer (Free) is a bit of a wallflower in the design department, but on the other hand it’s easy to use. As soon as the app fires up it’s ready to go.
Speed & Stability
Mobile Document Viewer (Free) does really well in this department. Good performance overall: runs fast and smoothly, although you can expect longer loading periods for larger documents.
Price/Performance Ratio
Mobile Document Viewer (Free) can be downloaded for free from the AndroidPIT App Center or the Android Market. The free versions come with ad banners.
Developer
GermanyTop App:
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Hi Jörg,
Thanks for your comment. Rating consistency is pretty important to the AndroidPIT team. Because there are a lot of apps and a lot of reviewers opinions and user experiences do inevitably vary to a certain degree. In most cases, however, the team agrees on the rating awarded by the reviewer to an app, and we stand by it.
As for the PDFs, you're of course totally correct in stating that the app description doesn't claim to support PDFs, but some users will read a review before they read an app description, and hence it makes sense to let users know that features which they may be looking for are available or not.
Thanks for pointing out the Apps2SD glitch -- we'll remedy that straight away!
Kind of disappointing to see that the OpenOffice Document Reader, which in terms of UI, speed, supported document formats and formatting of (OOo/LO) documents is clearly inferior to Mobile Document Viewer, did get better ratings in the test. A bit more consistent testing would be nice to see.
It is also strange to see that this test wastes more than a whole paragraph with the discovery that the app does not open PDF documents - something the app never claims in its app description.
Finally I'd like to add that the app _does_ support installation on SD card.
Thanks for the reply. The problem I have with the paragraph about the PDFs is that it kind of gives a negative introduction to the app since the first thing a reader sees is something the app can _not_ offer. And it is IMO unncessary to stress this inability of reading PDFs because the app never claims to be able to read them. At the least the test report for the Adobe Reader does not waste a paragraph mentioning that the app cannot read .xls or plain text files...
Overall I have the feeling that the app was treated unfair and regard the money for the test report as wasted. I will certainly not recommend such paid reports to others.
Cheers