The Story

Why faff with cables, memory cards, or fiddly desktop-software to ensure your digital life remains readily accessible to you or, indeed, to share with friends and colleagues? Especially so when you can, instead, simply stash many of these files in one central repository in “the cloud” and then dip into it as necessary.

Dropbox for Android provides easy access to the respected Dropbox cloud-based storage service from an Android handset and also offers software for most computers or other smartphones.

Store and share photos, videos and documents with Dropbox

The Experience

Whether you need to set up a Dropbox account or log into one that you have previously established, the app will have you up and running in a minute or two. You can then create new folders or see the ones already lurking within your own Dropbox, then immediately begin to upload files from your phone.

It’s a wise idea to ensure that you upload files to the right folders, though, as there is currently no way to move them around by using the Android app. This task is, thankfully, easy to pull off from the main Dropbox website.

Once you’ve uploaded files, you can then pull them back down whenever you want – or share a link to them with a friend or colleague via email, Facebook, Twitter and so on. Photos will pop up in your gallery app and MP3s stream nicely straight into the Android Music app. You will need, ideally, to be able to access a wi-fi network or a decent 3G data-connection.

The Dropbox service gives you a healthy 2GB of storage online for free. Upgrading to the £6.50 monthly service gives a massive jump to 50GB – and there’s still more available if you need it.

The Bottom Line

Dropbox’s cloud is nothing but pure silver lining. An indispensable tool for today’s smartphone owner