Considering how popular Office has been on the desktop, you’d assume it’d be the go-to productivity suite on mobile too. In fact, though, the company has made a few missteps: The iPhone app is watered down, and as nice as the iPad version is, you need an Office subscription to do any sort of editing. Fortunately, though, Microsoft is changing course: The company just announced that it will offer basic editing as a standard feature on the iPad, the same way it already does on Android and the iPhone. Keep in mind that you’ll still need an Office 365 subscription to unlock certain advanced editing tools, but most of those are probably better-suited to business users anyway.Additionally, the company is beginning public beta testing on its first-ever Android tablet app, which will see a wide release early next year. The software, which includes standalone Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps, is still in development, but what we’ve seen so far suggests the apps have feature parity with the iPad suite. Also like the iPad app, it will include basic editing tools for free. You can sign up for the preview today, but it may take a while before you get a turn: Microsoft says it plans to add users gradually, with an eye toward testing a wide variety of devices.

via Microsoft makes Office for iPad free to use, starts testing Android tablet version.