Are there ZERO decent PIM's for Android?

[mitchellvii]

Hi all,

Just bought an HTC EVO. Went in to start scheduling my day and learned (to my utter amazement) that there is NO INTEGRATION between Contacts and Calendars at all. None.

If I want to call on Bob Wednesday at 2 pm, I cannot simply go to the Calendar, look up Bob's Contact information and link the Event to his record. Thus making accessing phone numbers, addresses, etc MUCH easier.

I actually am required to enter all of this by hand from memory I guess.

Are they insane?

THE SOLUTION:
So I did some research online and it looked like a product called "Touchdown" might be the solution.

I got an MS Exchange account, installed Touchdown and with great excitement opened it.

Same thing - NO calendar/contact integration AT ALL. How can they market this product as a PIM? How can anyone call this a "smart" phone when it can't do the simplest thing?

Why is this so hard? I love this phone and want to stay with Android, but without an effect PIM (like Agendus), I simply cannot use this phone.

What is the answer?

 

[mcapozzi]

Why wouldn't you just create a entry in your calendar called "Call Bob", then when the reminder goes off, just call Bob.

Or am I missing something here???

-Mike

 

[KlaymenDK]

Welcome to the forum!

It's true, Google's got nothing on what Palm did a decade ago. IMVHO, they've done a p!ss-poor job of the PDA aspect of the OS.

It would be very nice if the calendar alarm had a facility to display Bob's number, so you could call him (from that or another phone).

The only thing that comes anywhere close to the Calendar/Contact integration is the "Auto Birthdays" in the GMail Calendar, which I would also call faked because it does not show Bob's age or provide any way to actually open Bob's contact entry. At least, with HTC Sense on Android 2.x, you can view your contacts' birthdays on the phone; I don't know if that's due to Android 2.x or HTC Sense, but this certainly doesn't work on a stock Android 1.x. It's evident that it's a phone book rather than an address book proper.

We can only hope that Android 4.0 will be perfect ...

 

[nightfishing]

There are a couple of things in play, here in 2010 that are causing this "gap" in functionality.

1. The practice of storing all your info LOCALLY is going away and going away fast. The old PIM concept of storing and manipulating contacts, appointments etc on a local disc (or pda) is just about over.

2. All the info is now stored in the cloud (or from a centralized server) and it is all very easily accessed 24/7 from our PDAs, laptops, netbooks etc. The days of manually syncing multiple access points is (thankfully) almost gone.

But, and here's the rub, the method of storage and access is still unsettled. There are a number of players and options and the market is not quite certain who/what will emerge as the standard. Due to this, we are not seeing the major players 100% on board with the tools that will allow all that information to interact intuitively on a multitude of device.

BB, MS and Google are all looking to develop cross-platform tools that will allow the same (or comparable) manipulation to the info from ALL of your access points.

Now, that doesn't explain why there isn't a simple tool to create an appointment from a contact or similar, but hopefully we will start seeing the bigger picture clarify which will solve all the little problems as well.

 

[toronado455]

Sorry to bump an older thread, but I searched and my question relates directly to the above post.

I'm old fashioned in that I'm not quite comfortable yet with the whole concept of using a cloud-based contact & calendar and freely turning over all this information to Google.

Is there a non-Google, non-cloud-based PIM for Android that I would basically "manually sync" the old-fashioned way via USB with my PC? Or should I just get over myself and use the GMail contacts and Google Calendar on the PC?

 

[Deltahawk]

See my note entries in RED below:

There are a couple of things in play, here in 2010 that are causing this "gap" in functionality.

1. The practice of storing all your info LOCALLY is going away and going away fast. The old PIM concept of storing and manipulating contacts, appointments etc on a local disc (or pda) is just about over.

And I say "screw that".
I am also looking for a full featured PIM at least as good as what I ran on my Dell Axim PPC.

2. All the info is now stored in the cloud (or from a centralized server) and it is all very easily accessed 24/7 from our PDAs, laptops, netbooks etc. The days of manually syncing multiple access points is (thankfully) almost gone.

The point of using a handheld PPC was that you always had your info with you. There was no need to sync "multiple" access points, only to allow a backup when you wanted.
I am tired of being forced to accept technology that I don't want and do not need.

Sorry to bump an older thread, but I searched and my question relates directly to the above post.

I'm old fashioned in that I'm not quite comfortable yet with the whole concept of using a cloud-based contact & calendar and freely turning over all this information to Google.

As I noted above, I am, like you, looking for a full functioned PIM for my Bionic after relying on a Dell Axim PPC for a very long time.
I don't want to use a cloud and do not trust a cloud, so I guess that makes me "old fashioned" as well.

Is there a non-Google, non-cloud-based PIM for Android that I would basically "manually sync" the old-fashioned way via USB with my PC? Or should I just get over myself and use the GMail contacts and Google Calendar on the PC?

The closest I've found to what you (and I) are looking for is Pimlico.
It does interface with the Google calendar so I'm not exactly sure how much it depends on cloud-based backup or use.
I am also not so sure of how well it does notes as far as organization and categories.
I haven't tried it yet, but it "reads" well and gives me some hope that it, or something similar soon, will give us "oldtimers" who came from the ranks of PPC's for all those years something to replace our PPC and Palms that did "PIM" so well.

I did a little looking to see if there is a way to run Windows Mobile Pocket PC apps on Android, but I hit a dead-end immediately.
That would have allowed me to run the same PIM I did on my Axim PPC and would have been great. Oh well...

If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd sure like to hear them.

 

[toronado455]

I use Sunbird and Thunderbird on the PC, so I did some searching and found some similar discussions:
Direct Sync between Thunderbird and Android without Google - xda-developers
How do I sync Thunderbird/Lightning on an Android phone?

Thinking about giving this a try:
BirdieSync - Synchronize Thunderbird

 

[chanchan05]

Simple solution: Deja Office app
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.companionlink.clusbsync

+ Category manager with colors
+ Advanced contacts sort (first name, last name, company name, categories)
+ 5 calendar views (day, week, month, year, list)
+ Multiple task styles (GTD, Franklin Covey, TBYL, Outlook-style, Palm-style)
+ Link contacts to calendar events
+ Calendar and task alarms
+ Group contacts by city, company, postal code
+ Set advanced calendar recurrence patterns
+ Daily agenda summary
+ Private records (password-protected)
+ Custom fields
+ Contact photos
+ Global search across all data types
+ 3 font sizes (Delightful, Business, Micro)
+ Guided wizard for quick setup
+ Set Android home screen shortcuts to individual DejaOffice apps
+ Integrates with built-in Android Contacts, Calendar, Dialer, Maps, Email, SMS, Browser
+ Dual-pane viewing options for Android Tablets. Better productivity and optimal use of screen space.
+ Supported languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (China) and Chinese (Taiwan).
==========================
Optional PC Sync
==========================
Sync DejaOffice with your productivity or PIM software:
+ Microsoft Outlook
+ Microsoft Outlook with Business Contact Manager
+ IBM Lotus Notes
+ Sage ACT!
+ Novell GroupWise
+ Palm Desktop
+ FrontRange GoldMine
+ Salesforce CRM
+ Time & Chaos
Requires CompanionLink on the PC. Prices start at $49.95, one-time. Free phone and email support.

 

[toronado455]

I tried BirdieSync. It synced my Thunderbird contacts, but failed to work with Sunbird, so I uninstalled it. Not sure what the problem was. The PC app seemed to work, but on the Android app, there was no option to sync Calendar under BirdieSync. I might try it again in the future if I can figure out how to make that work.

Next I'm going to try MyPhoneExplorer.

 

[6StringDave]

When it comes to Google, shouldn't the word "perfect" be spelled with a K? It's already got the F in about the right place!

 

[toronado455]

I think I figured out the problem I'm having with my phone's calendar not syncing with Sunbird via BirdieSync. I'm trying out MyPhoneExplorer and it seems to have the same problem. On the phone, if you go to Calendar>Menu>More>Calendars it only shows my Google account. There doesn't seem to be any way to add a non-Google calendar.