SkyDrive apps for iPhone (now) and Windows Phone (soon) released

ms-SkyDrive_h_rgbMicrosoft announced new SkyDrive apps for both Windows Phone and iPhone this morning in a blog post on Inside Windows Live.  We pointed out a hint of just such an app on the way last week via a comment by Omar Shahine, and now here it is!

The new apps both have the same functionality, meaning that an iPhone user will have the same experience with SkyDrive through mobile that a Windows Phone user does.  Of course Windows Phone users have already had some functionality through the Office Hub, allowing them access to SkyDrive to post photos taken with your Windows Phone to SkyDrive, for example, or get to documents from the Office Hub.

This new app does quite a bit more than that, however.  Mike Torres explains:

Even with all that we’ve done to integrate SkyDrive into Windows Phone, we still have more to do. In talking with SkyDrive power users, we found that many still want the full SkyDrive experience from Windows Phone, including tasks like browsing their entire SkyDrive, sharing links to folders or files, deleting files, and creating folders. Many people who have more than a few dozen files will start to organize them, and we want to make sure people have a direct representation of SkyDrive on their phone. Folders are a natural and time-tested way to organize groups of files, and browsing based on how files are already organized is important for SkyDrive power users.

So, in addition to what you can already do on Windows Phone with SkyDrive through the Office Hub, you can delete files and folders, create folders, share links to files and folders, browse across your “entire SkyDrive” ((update): indeed, “entire SkyDrive” does not include your Live Mesh synced storage, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, and this app does not provide access to files stored via Live Mesh, even though they are stored in “SkyDrive”, and we would consider that part of our “entire SkyDrive”), and view files by “recent” or “shared”.  Here’s a quick summary video for the Windows Phone app:

[youtube_video]ARyJyeMp_G8[/youtube_video]

The apps are set to be available today (they may be “rolling out” in your region), although at the time of this writing only the iPhone app link is live.  The Windows Phone app hasn’t shown up yet, but should be available soon on the Windows Phone Marketplace.