Review - Android for Work, Productivity for Professionals by Marziah Karch Anyone who has looked at the smartphone market recently knows there are a variety of phones to choose from. As I’m sure you will have noticed many of these phones use the same hardware but what provides the features, in addition to the hardware, are the operating systems. So which one to buy; especially if it is for business use. As the name suggests this book was written mainly for the mobile office worker who wants to get the most out of their Android phone, while you may not want an Android phone it’s useful to see what the features are available. I found it useful to help determine the features I want in my smartphone, independent of operating system (OS) or smartphone vendor. You're will be glad to learn you don’t need to be a programmer or a techie to understand this book. Android is still evolving, both from an operating system (OS) view point and phone vendor’s modifications, This book was written mainly with the Google Nexus One running Android 2.1 and 2.2 in mind, although other phones and earlier versions of Android are mentioned, as I write this Android 2.3 has just been introduced. As you read through the book it’s peppered with the tips, notes and web links which provide further information, I found this very useful and a great help to get started. The information, in chapter 1, on activation was very interesting, this requires a Google account, and some Android phones require a Gmail account as well, worth knowing these sorts of things before you decide on the phone. As I read through the book there was lots of useful information e.g. international calls, VPN, email, Microsoft exchange etc. However what was disappointing was that this information was not summarised in an appendix, perhaps in table form, to help choose smartphone features etc. The book is about 300 pages, I realised this about page 100 and started to make my own notes. Chapter 8 looks at “Android in a Microsoft World,” this is a useful chapter since many enterprises use Microsoft products. However knowing you can download Microsoft documents is cold comfort if you can’t do anything with them. Fortunately, you can view and even edit Microsoft Office documents with the help of some third-party tools. The most important thing to ask yourself, as you evaluate apps, is just how much you need them to do. Do you just need to view Office files, or do you need the ability to edit them? This book is well structured and written in an easy to understand format, it’s not technical. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand and get the best out of your Android smartphone.