This is the ninth article in the series App of the Week series.
The issue with mobile devices is not processing power, battery life, or enough different applications. While any of those could be better and will with advancements in technology, the issue that has come to the forefront is synchronicity between all platforms. Is the PDF document on your phone the most updated one on your desktop where you do all of the editing of it?
One of the forerunners in the iOS file sharing applications is Dropbox. Here are its best and least favorite features.
The Good
There is a reason that Dropbox is a better known brand than Google Drive or Sugarsync.
- Upgraded Navigation and Uploading A couple of months ago, the controls to navigate and upload was absolutely difficult and unintuitive. But since then, they have upgraded it to something simplistic and easy to do.
- All Formats Accepted It does not matter if you have Word documents, PDF files, photos, and movies because they are all supported on Dropbox. That fact alone eliminates most of the competition, except for Google Drive and SugarSync.
- Free Up To 18GB Dropbox has up to 18 GB of free space for you, whereas Google Drive only allows 5GB before you have to pay. Assuming you are not sharing full videos and raw, large sized photos, 18GB is all you will need for personal use.
The Bad
Unfortunately, while Dropbox is a great app, it has not taken a commanding lead because of these issues.
- No Offline Mode Option It would be impractical and impossible to do an offline mode for Dropbox if you increase your filesize with the service, so we are not advocating that. Instead, we would like to see an option for individual files to be available offline without having to transfer it from Dropbox to iPhotos on the iPhone.
- Editing On iOS Google Drive allows for you to edit on the iPhone directly, something that Dropbox does not allow. Changes should not be made in mass because of the inability to make changes quickly, but minor ones would be great.
- Team Boxes You can share your boxes with others to download your documents, but it would be perfect to have a team mode that allows someone back at the office to make changes on a different account while the person at the presentation pitch can pull up those instant changes. (Note: This is available on the business plan)
What do you love or hate about the Dropbox app?
Josh Robinson says
I have learned to love dropbox. It is such a great tool, I can send files to the computer in the youth area without a hard drive going back and forth. Thanks for the post, good insights
seventy8Productions says
I fully agree. Do you have any complaints that you have run into with it? I will say that Google Drive is a great alternative, but I am invested enough with dropbox and have 9 GB on it that I can’t switch.
Josh Robinson says
I haven’t had any complaints at all, mine is up to around 16 gigs of free space because of all the sharing I do with my team, friends. I love it