Google releases faster Drive app with video streaming support on Android 3.0+, pinch-to-zoom for presentations

Google on Wednesday released an updated version of its native Drive app for Android, featuring improved performance and two new features. You can download the new version now directly from the Google Play Store (7.2MB).

Google wouldn’t detail the performance improvements, although it did say that you should see a faster experience across the whole app. Your mileage will of course vary depending on your Android version as well as your device.

Next up is a new feature that lets you stream video files on Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) and higher. For Drive users who share clips with their friends and family, or for work, this will be a very useful addition.

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Some quick math shows us that this means Google is supporting 43.9 percent of Android users out there. While that’s not very high, it’s certainly better than its Chrome app for Android.

Last but not least, the presentation viewer has received pinch-to-zoom support. This is a welcome addition for those using Android devices with small screens. If you need to see the details in that chart in the corner, you can now do so directly with your fingers: no fumbling around in menus and whatnot.

Here’s the full Google Drive version 1.1.592.10 for Android changelog:

• Performance improvements across the whole app.
• Support for streaming video files on Honeycomb+.
• Pinch to Zoom support in presentation viewer.
• Bug fixes and other improvements.

For those on iOS, the Drive app was updated just last month. We’ll keep you posted as Google keeps updating its Drive apps. It seems that the company is updating each app every two months (the last Android update was in December), on an alternating schedule. If that’s true, we’ll have an iOS update for you next month.

See also – Google Drive’s Create menu now lets you add and access third-party, Drive-enabled apps and Google Drive now lets developers share hosted websites by storing HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files

Image credit: Pawel Kryj