GLOBAL – The Nokia Lumia 800 isn’t all about Nokia Mix Radio and Plants vs. Zombies, you know. It’s also a really handy work tool, and not just for talking to people.

It used to be the case that you went into the office at 9am and did your work at your computer. Then you went home. Times change and many of us now work with more flexibility regarding where and when work takes place. As a result, access to work documents on your mobile phone has moved from nice to necessity.

This functionality has existed on Nokia phones for a long time, of course. But the latest incarnation to appear on the Nokia Lumia 800 takes it to the next level.

Let me give a couple of specific examples.

A lot of our work here on Conversations involves reviewing other people’s articles in the form of Word documents.

If we’re writing about a product or service, for example, then we ask the person responsible for that product to check the facts and make sure we haven’t left out any important details. Then the writers and editors on the team will also review each other’s articles.

That often means that people make edits or leave comments in the margins using the Track Changes functionality – perhaps requesting a change in emphasis or pointing out an extra thing we could include.

Historically, there was no alternative here but to fire up the laptop, which is a bit tricky when it’s standing-room only on a crowded bus.

On the Nokia Lumia 800, you open the incoming email and tap on the name of the attachment to download it. Then you tap it again to open it in the onboard version of Microsoft Word.

What’s new is that comments are highlighted. I can review them by tapping on the highlight and move between them using directional arrows. By the time I’ve reached my destination, I know exactly what needs changing and how much time it’s likely to take. I can also add my own comments and send it back, or onwards to another writer.

There’s edit functions, too, of course and while composing full-length articles on a mobile phone remains a bit of a challenge, the functionality is more than adequate for clearing up a few typos.

Here’s a second example.

Before we write a story, we often get sent briefing documents about the relevant product or service. Sometimes these are pretty long. Historically, reading them on your mobile was a bit impractical.

The new version of Word on the Nokia Lumia 800 once again makes the work a lot easier. Here it’s because of the inline search and outline views. Search means it’s easy to jump to the relevant details in a document. Say I want to look up the measurements of a new phone: I’ll do a search for “mm” and nine times out of ten, it will jump to the part covering the dimensions.

Outline view means I can jump to the section of the document that I’m interested in really quickly. Once again, maybe I’m looking for some specifications in a lengthy document with lots of sections. I can collapse the document to see the section headings and jump straight to the specs.

Lastly, moving your documents elsewhere is also super easy. You can send the document as an email attachment straight from the Share menu item – exactly the same as Word on a computer.

If you’re a bit more modern and you’ve moved beyond emailing documents to one another, then you can use a shared, private space in the Cloud, perhaps SharePoint or Office 365 or even your SkyDrive space. Once they’ve been set up in your accounts, the Share menu automatically includes these spaces as extra choices.

Any more tips for working better using your phone?

image credit: dsasso