SkyDrive App for Android Phones Released -- Redmondmag.com

SkyDrive App for Android Phones Released

By Kurt Mackie
08/28/2012

The Microsoft SkyDrive 1.0 app for Android phones was released on the Google Play app portal today.

SkyDrive is a file storage service for consumers, providing 7 GB of space via Microsoft's datacenters at no charge. The service came out of beta release earlier this month. At that time, Microsoft noted that SkyDrive supported Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Phone, Apple iOS and OS X Lion, but support for Linux-based Android on mobile devices was going to arrive a little later.

Today, Microsoft announced that SkyDrive is now available for Android smartphones at the Google Play Store.

The SkyDrive for Android app works with Android 2.3 or earlier versions of that operating system, but it works best with Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," according to Mike Torres, a group program manager on the SkyDrive apps team.

SkyDrive apps are designed for mobile devices, but those signed up to use SkyDrive can also use their device's browser to access their files stored in the Internet cloud. The apps are a bit more limited when they use the browser for file handling, compared with using the Windows desktop or Mac desktop.

"SkyDrive customers can upload files up to 300 MB in size in the browser and up to 2 GB using SkyDrive for the Windows Desktop (preview) and SkyDrive for Mac OS X Lion (preview)," a Microsoft spokesperson has explained.

The file limits also apply to sharing files, so 2 GB is the limit for file sharing with SkyDrive. According to Microsoft's comparison chart, the free Google Drive service offers greater file-sharing capacity at 5 GB.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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