A few minutes ago, Google released their official Google Drive app on the App Store. We’ve since then downloaded the app and have put it through its initial paces.
What we found was a first offering that’s lacking a whole lot of what makes other apps like DropBox great. You can easily view your files, but that’s where most of the fun ends.
Sadly, you can’t create new documents, or even upload photos via this initial version of Google Drive. The interface is decent, and the app seems solid from a stability perspective, but there really isn’t a compelling reason to choose it over something like DropBox thus far…
[tube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuD4MUOufbQ[/tube]
You can view virtually anything compatible with iOS with no problems, but if you want to edit something like a document, Google Drive will prompt you to open the document in Safari. From there it will ask you to log into your Google Account, and you can then edit the document via Google Docs. I wouldn’t exactly call that a seamless experience.
When it comes to photos, you can view them fine, but there’s not even an option to save the photo to your Camera Roll.
Interestingly, there is an in-app purchase option for 25 GBs of additional storage for $24.99 for one year. I say that’s interesting, because Google will be essentially lining Apple’s pockets with any additional storage purchase from their users (Apple takes a 30% cut).
Ultimately, Google Drive 1.0 lays the groundwork for a more fleshed out experience to come, but as of now, it’s not even worth your time in my opinion. Stick to DropBox for the foreseeable future if you want decent cloud storage management capabilities on your iOS device.
What do you think? Will you be using Google Drive? You can download Google Drive using this link.