- Pros
Simple, clear interface. Automatic photo uploading.
- Cons Free storage allotment is low. Document viewing and editing requires external apps.
- Bottom Line
The Dropbox Windows Phone app gives users of the popular syncing service solid access to their files, along with automatic photo uploading. But Microsoft OneDrive offers some advantages, not the least of which is price.
Dropbox remains a popular service, despite less-expensive and better-integrated options from software powerhouses, such as Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Apple iCloud Drive. The smaller synced-folder vendor is, however, to be congratulated in delivering a Windows Universal app (one that runs on Windows Phone as well as Windows PCs). Not even OneDrive can make that claim yet, and of course Google and Apple wouldn't dream of taking the lead in that area. But it makes sense for a company whose aim is to have all your documents and digital media available on all your devices all the time to have clients for as many platforms as exist. The Dropbox app was built by rock star Windows Phone developer, Rudy Huyn, the same author of the Instagram, Snapchat, Tinder, and Wikipedia apps.
Getting Started With Dropbox for Windows Phone
You get the app from the Windows Phone Apps+Games store. It will install on Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 phones, requiring just a paltry 4MB of storage space. To start doing anything at all with the app, you'll have to sign in to your existing Dropbox account, or you can create a new account within the app. Dropbox is very particular about creating a strong password for your account; the one I tried was "Very Weak" till I added lots more characters. Even after adding some numbers and an asterisk, it only rated my password as So-So. (Online backup providers would do well to emulate this password obsessiveness.) The rule seems to be that if it's a password you can remember, Dropbox won't like it. Chalk up another one for password managers such as LastPass and its ilk.
Dropbox gives you 2GB for free, but that's far behind services like OneDrive and Google Drive, both of which offer 15GB free. The latter doesn't offer an official Windows Phone app, however. If you decide Dropbox is the way you need to go, you'll pay $9.99 a month for 1TB of storage space. Even Apple iCloud Drive offers more attractive pricing options than that, with a $0.99 per month 20 GB plan and a $3.99-per-month 200 GB plan—probably more than enough for the average home user. OneDrive has a $1.99 per month 100GB plan, and an Office 365 subscription (starting at $6.99 per month) gets you 1TB.
Once you're logged in, you'll see a mostly white screen, with three buttons along the top and three at the bottom. You'll have one document entry called, Getting Started.pdf. It's probably a good idea to give that a look. Unfortunately, that explanatory PDF isn't targeted for this app, but rather for the service as a whole, and it's really talking to desktop users. But in truth, you'll likely want to have Dropbox on your desktop, too, if you don't already.
The three buttons across the top are for views of your actual drop box—the area showing files you've uploaded from anywhere you've logged in to the same account; your photos; and your favorites. Those along the bottom are the action buttons, which let you create new folders (which will be subfolders of your main Dropbox folder), upload files from the Windows Phone, and search. An overflow menu button (…) lets you refresh the view, sort items (by date or name), change settings, and provide feedback.
Photo Uploads
The Dropbox app offers automatic photo upload, but it's rather limited compared with OneDrive: It doesn't encompass video, and by default uploading only happens when your battery is very full and you're connected via Wi-Fi. When you enable automatic photo uploading, you'll get additional choices, such as enabling uploading even while you have the camera app open; it's probably a good idea to enable this if you use the camera a lot. And you can tell the service to work with cellular data as well as Wi-Fi, in case you have a generous data plan. I did like that Dropbox uploaded all existing photos on my test phone, a Lumia 1020, but an option to specify whether existing or only new photos should be uploaded would be nice.
Sharing from the app is very simple, and plays into the Windows Phone app ecosystem. You simply tap the standard share button from any file view. A list of likely share target apps opens (Facebook, email, Twitter, etc.), and a message is created with the link to the file or folder. Alternatively, you can copy the link and paste it anywhere you like in the phone interface. When you share a folder, you have the option to invite a colleague to collaborate on the items in the folder.
Tapping on a document or spreadsheet file opened it as read-only in Office Word and Excel Mobile apps on my phone, but I could save a new copy to the phone storage or to OneDrive. PDFs opened in the Adobe Reader Windows Phone app, which was fine, but other services, such as IDrive, offer in-app viewing of common document types.
Drop Everything
Windows Phone users will be no doubt delighted to have a capable first-party app for the popular Dropbox file syncing and online storage service. OneDrive, our Editors' Choice syncing and online storage service, is more integrated with the phone OS and document-editing apps. For hardcore Dropbox fans, the app is a must-download, but if you're shopping for cloud syncing and storage, OneDrive is a better deal.
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