Best Calendar App?

[repair7]

pure GRID cALANDER , INEXPENSIVE

BEST FOR BUSINESS , easly to change settings, ease of use vids on youtube, good luck

 

[Phateless]

What's all this about color coding? Log in from a computer and set your colors with google.

 

[Cuddlemuffin]

I've just found Calendar Pad in my quest for a week view calendar. It doesn't look pretty (very Outlook-esque), but it does the job.

Note: it's only a viewer.

Yep, this is what I've been looking for also. I actually like the "Outlook" feel to it. I don't need too fancy, just show me what I have coming up.

 

[bikernunzio]

Here's a total rookie's question:
I want a calendar app (and contacts app) that I can sync with my PC as I used to do with my Palm Pilot. So, do all these calendar apps sync with a PC, or can somebody suggest something for me???
Also, is anybody aware of an app that imports calendar and contact information off of the Palm format (aba / dba files) onto the Droid so that I don't have to start from scratch.

 

[chrs]

Here's a total rookie's question:
I want a calendar app (and contacts app) that I can sync with my PC as I used to do with my Palm Pilot. So, do all these calendar apps sync with a PC, or can somebody suggest something for me???
Also, is anybody aware of an app that imports calendar and contact information off of the Palm format (aba / dba files) onto the Droid so that I don't have to start from scratch.

There's a great summary chart of the options to do this at Syncdroid.net. Based on that I'm planning to try "my phone explorer".

For migrating from palm, if you use companionlink software, you can keep using palm on your desktop, but then you are "stuck" with "dejaoffice" as the mobile software. It gets mixed reviews, so I've stayed away from that, even though it might be fine. Another option is to use Desktop Mirrror from livepim to transfer data from palm to outlook and then use one of the options listed at syncdroid to sync outlook to palm.

Don't feel bad about asking a rookie question--it's complicated!

 

[sky_boat]

The best calendar app I've ever used is on the iPhone/iPod platform - CalenGoo. I wish they'd port it over to Android.

I too like the looks of CalenGoo!

CalenGoo beta app available til Dec 17, paid app coming later in Dec

CalenGoo for Android Easy access to your Google Calendar with your Android phone.

 

[Tom_D]

Yes! That's what I was most excited to see in pocket informant. Calengoo also says they might do that in a future version, but for now, PI is the only one I've seen.

I think I like the general format of CalenGoo but the date and time picker in Pocket Informant trumps CalenGoo. Thanks for the lead.

 

[chrs]

Calengoo has a user poll going on what feature to implement next. Top item is the date and time picker, but you can go vote for it too by going to the user poll.

(In the meantime, I'm using Pocket Informant)

 

[FlyHighx]

Played With Calengoo on my Evo and liked , no, loved a lot of its features. In fact, I really want to use it to replace HTC calendar but won't at this time. The problem I have is that it is constantly using 5-6% cpu. Usually, on my Evo, the CPU sits around 1-2% total at idle unless I'm actively running an app. After I installed Calengoo, my CPU usage jumped considerably to a constant 6-7% and remained high even though Calengoo was not open, just running in the background. No other app on my phone uses this much CPU power just at idle. Android System itself uses about 3-4%. I played with the sync settings trying to vary the sync intervals but the app just uses a lot of resources no matter how often it is set to sync. Even killing the app had no effect. It would restart (as it should in order to sync) and go back to the high CPU utilization but without ever being opened, just idling in the background . I admit this is not a scientific evaluation but I'm worried what effect this will have on battery life. For now, uninstalled and will follow the app and hope that as it comes out of Beta, these issues will be resolved.

 

[funpig]

Here's a total rookie's question:
I want a calendar app (and contacts app) that I can sync with my PC as I used to do with my Palm Pilot. So, do all these calendar apps sync with a PC, or can somebody suggest something for me???
Also, is anybody aware of an app that imports calendar and contact information off of the Palm format (aba / dba files) onto the Droid so that I don't have to start from scratch.

I was a long time Treo/Datebk5 user 3 weeks ago. I finally bit the bullet and adopted Android and transfered my Calendar/Contacts to Google. Importing my contacts was easy using the existing Palm Desktop. I just took each category of my contacts and exported it into a .csv file and then imported it into the corresponding category.

I tested Companionlink (palm to google) but I lost all of my categories in the calendar (everything lumped into one unfiled category). I bought Pimlical (Pimlico Software) for $20 and transferred all of the palm calendar to google, while converting each category into a separate calendar. I use Pimlical to sync the google calendar to my desktop for backup purposes.

I still have concerns about privacy, but I am really embracing the convenience of having my contacts and calendar on google and being able to sync by wifi to my Android phone (I do not use a data plan).

 

[chrs]

Since it's hard to keep track of all the different apps discussed here and what their features are, I started a table on the Android wiki with rows for a few of the apps that interest me and columns for a few of the features that interest me. Any of you can sign up to edit the wiki too and can add rows for apps you like or know something about and columns for features you care about.

 

[funpig]

I have version 8.12 of calengoo installed (emailed to me by developer). Appbrain shows that there is an update version 8.14. When I click it, it takes me to the Market but gives me an error message "Not Found". Same thing when I do a search of "calengoo" on the Market. (I have emailed the developer again).

Anybody else experiencing the same problem?

 

[ezhilarasu]

Rainlendar (All Platforms)
Google Calendar (Web-based)
Thunderbird with Lightning (All Platforms)
Microsoft Outlook (Windows)
iCal (Mac OS X)

Rainlendar (All Platforms)

Rainlendar is an efficient calendar and to-do list app that lives embedded on your desktop. It's completely customizable, and it integrates with virtually any other popular calendar application (meaning that if you don't want to use it independently, you can still install it to embed your favorite calendar on your desktop). Rainlendar's free version sports nearly full functionality, but if you want shared calendar, Outlook, or Google Calendar support (for editing GCal whether you're online or not), you'll need to pony up roughly $14 (

 

[chrs]

Just be be clear, when ezhilarasu lists "five best calendar applications" that's really Five best PC/Mac Calendars. The "all platforms" marking some of them just means "mac, windows, and linux". None of these are Android apps.

Also, the "source" is misattributed. It's really all a direct quote from a lifehacker post.

 

[andyrubin]

Nostalgic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EuSCOQW4kc

One thing I think is not good for the health of Android is that the built-in database seems to be pretty rudimentary and all these 3rd parties use their own proprietary versions/add-on which aren't compatible with each other.

 

[funpig]

Nostalgic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EuSCOQW4kc

One thing I think is not good for the health of Android is that the built-in database seems to be pretty rudimentary and all these 3rd parties use their own proprietary versions/add-on which aren't compatible with each other.

I'm a big fan of Datebk5, but I would not agree with your last comment. Palm used a proprietory database. The Palm data must be converted to be used in Outlook, google, yahoo etc. Even the developer of Datebk5/6 is embracing google. His pimlical fully syncs with google and his first planned mobile platform will be on an Android.

 

[andyrubin]

You're missing my point.

Google Calendar is able.

Android's Calendar isn't.

If it's, then there's no point for all these developers to implement an additional database (for those functions not supported by the built-in database).

I'm not sure how CESD will do it, but I believe there will also be an additional database as well, just like how it's done in Datebk.

 

[funpig]

Yeah, I don't understand what you are trying to say.

I've had calengoo, business calendar, touch calendar and pocket informant on my Android all at the same time and as far as I can tell under the Applications manager, they all use the same Android calendar database which was synced from google calendar. There was no additional database for these other third party calendars.

Datebk5/6 did the same thing with Palm; it just used the Palm database. The problem with Palm OS as far as I was concerned was that its database required conversion to a more universally accepted format to be used with outlook, yahoo or google. This required additional software with the potential for conversion errors.

I am using CESD's Pimlical. For $20, it was a cheap way to do a one time conversion of my old Palm calendar and to sync it to google. But other than using it to backup my google calendar info onto a desktop, I prefer to use the google calendar (and my Android) for every day use. Both my secretary and I have instant up to date anywhere access to the google calendar. Pimlical is very powerful but also has a potential to really mess up my data (there are so many menus and preferences and the manual is not the easiest to understand).

 

[andyrubin]

PI separate database(s)? - WebIS, Inc. Forums

1.0 does have its own database as well as using the Android database.

I found it in 5 minutes, and apparently I have no idea what dbSetup of Datebk did. I don't want to waste any more time to research further (yes, I did that before posting) and respond to people talking out of their heads. You may check with the developers yourself. Come back when you're more informed and we may have a more civil discussion.

Merry Christmas.

 

[cully]

Don't forget to try Gemini Calendar. Hold you finger over a date and see what you have scheduled. I've tried many...none compare to the simplicity and well designed layout.

 

[reinbeau]

PI separate database(s)? - WebIS, Inc. Forums



I found it in 5 minutes, and apparently I have no idea what dbSetup of Datebk did. I don't want to waste any more time to research further (yes, I did that before posting) and respond to people talking out of their heads. You may check with the developers yourself. Come back when you're more informed and we may have a more civil discussion.

Merry Christmas.

Datebk3/4/5/6 has a database, but it's where all the customizations live - it uses the native Palm calendar database. Know that for a fact, yes, it did come out of my head, but my head has been buried in alpha and beta testing of the Datebk programs for years now

 

[chrs]

Don't forget to try Gemini Calendar. Hold you finger over a date and see what you have scheduled. I've tried many...none compare to the simplicity and well designed layout.

Gemini has a unique and striking look, which might be a big plus or a big minus depending on your taste. The feature you describe above sounds nice--I hadn't noticed that in my first trial.

But in the android wiki calendar table, Gemini is listed as lacking two features:

• Calendar-based date picker
• Search entire calendar

I guess it depends whether care about those.

 

[chrs]

Calengoo just released an update with a calendar-based date picker!

Unfortunately for now it's only for picking the start date of a repeating event, and the date selection for the end date is the old scroll wheel thingy. But presumably now that the nice one is coded up it can be used there too.

 

[funpig]

The ability to search is really important for me. And Calengoo is looking like the winner for me.

Business Calendar only searches for about one year forward and maybe a month or two back. If you force scroll the search result screen sometimes you may be able to push the search further back but it seems to take some time to do this a few events at a time.

Pocket Informant does a full search of all past and future events, but the search results are displayed without any dates which defeats the purpose of the search. Pocket Informant also has a weird bug where it displays multiple deleted recurring events.

Calengoo will give you the full past and future search. The developer has been great in responding to my emails. Originally, the search results had a bug where it displayed the search results in alphabetical order instead of date order. Also, it had the same Pocket Informant bug where deleted recurring events would show up in the search. All of this has been fixed in the latest version 8.16.

Only thing is that Galengoo is starting to get a bit laggy. With all of its features, the program is getting pretty large (almost 3.8 mb installed). I only have a 600 MHz processor in my Android 2.1. A faster processor would probably help and a newer version of Android couldn't hurt. I'm all for adding features like a calendar based date picker (in fact I just requested a feature to save/remember the last search results so I don't have to re-enter the search parameters each time) but I just hope it doesn't slow it down more.

[PS to Andyrubin. As far as I know the Android calendar database used by all the third party app calendars is all the same. My Android calendar storage goes back 10 years and forward about 30 years and totals about 7.5 MB. None of the Apps have a separate calendar storage database. There is some small separate data for your personal preferences (eg colour, font size, date format etc). In Datebk5/6, as far as I know dbsetup.prc did not set up a separate calendar database, it just set up the help files, icons and timezones which were not available in the original Palm OS calendar. ]

 

[andyrubin]

Datebk3/4/5/6 has a database, but it's where all the customizations live - it uses the native Palm calendar database. Know that for a fact, yes, it did come out of my head, but my head has been buried in alpha and beta testing of the Datebk programs for years now

That's exactly what I meant - The built-in calendar database is limited in certain ways that developers have to add on top a layer to implement certain functions. And the lack of compatibility between these developers is a worrisome sign.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

P.S. And Pimlical/CESD has just announced the Android version... $4.95

Pimlico Software home page

Screenshots:

http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/androidscreenshotstemporary.html

Note: Requires Android 2.2 or up.