So does iPhone + iCal work well... as a PDA?

[matthewHUB]

hey Guys,

I'd really like to know what creating new events in iCal is really like. I'd like to buy an iPhone to use with lots of PDA functionality (email, events, calendar, notes etc.) You guys that have them - can iPhone sufficiently replace a PDA?

Could anyone post a few more screenshots of what iCal on iPhone looks like from a day to day basis. Can you have week/month views etc.

Thanks for all your help.

M

 

[Cepe Indicum]

I'd like to second this request...

If and when the iPhone reaches the UK, I'll be in line if it can do the job of a PDA.

Thanks.

 

[Krevnik]

hey Guys,

I'd really like to know what creating new events in iCal is really like. I'd like to buy an iPhone to use with lots of PDA functionality (email, events, calendar, notes etc.) You guys that have them - can iPhone sufficiently replace a PDA?

Could anyone post a few more screenshots of what iCal on iPhone looks like from a day to day basis. Can you have week/month views etc.

Thanks for all your help.

M

The calendaring in the iPhone is adequate. It doesn't support the concept of multiple calendars (everything synced onto the desktop is shoved into a single iCal calendar). However, it does support up to 2 alarms per event, notes for the event, etc.

It is pretty much the core functionality you would expect. List, Day and Month views are available (no weekly), and a button to take you immediately to today in whatever view you are in. Month view does a decent job of replacing the weekly view by letting you drag your finger around the calendar, and in the space below the calendar, it will show the events for that day, updating live. So you can easily scan events just by sliding your finger around.

Are you near an Apple store?

EDIT: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPhone_User_Guide.pdf Has some basic information on how the calendar functionality works.

 

[matthewHUB]

Thanks Krevnik,

I'm in the UK so i can't go to the store to see one. I'm at college in the US though so i'll get one when i go back in September. I'm hoping it can act as my phone/PDA and do an adequate job.

 

[Krevnik]

Thanks Krevnik,

I'm in the UK so i can't go to the store to see one. I'm at college in the US though so i'll get one when i go back in September. I'm hoping it can act as my phone/PDA and do an adequate job.

Read through the user's manual. It does a decent job letting you know what it can do. I find the calendaring adequate enough for my needs, and about on par (overall) with Windows Mobile's calendaring. The calendar view itself is superior to WM, although WM makes up for it with OTA sync and having the weekly view. Otherwise, they are pretty similar in functionality.

 

[keithos27]

I've had 3 different iPhones and have still been able to sync calendar events created from my iPhone back to iCal... so it hasn't really been a viable option for me as of yet.

I heard from an Apple store rep that it's because I'm a .Mac user and there is some background sync issues between iCal, .Mac, and iPhone??? Who knows...

 

[lawcomic]

I would be 100% happy with the iPhone calendar if it let you designate which iCal calendar an event created on iPhone was supposed to go in.

As it is now, it all goes to one calendar.

Other than that, it's a pretty slick calendar.

 

[Krevnik]

I've had 3 different iPhones and have still been able to sync calendar events created from my iPhone back to iCal... so it hasn't really been a viable option for me as of yet.

I heard from an Apple store rep that it's because I'm a .Mac user and there is some background sync issues between iCal, .Mac, and iPhone??? Who knows...

That is weird... I use dotMac myself and haven't seen that. Granted, I don't sync my calendars (yet).

 

[aricher]

I'm a .mac guy and have been syncing my iPhone and 3 Macs all with no issues. Once though it did duplicate events on one computer, a re-sync removed the events.

 

[keithos27]

Am I extremely unlucky, lol? I re-formatted my MBP, reset .Mac, and plugged in a brand new iPhone... It doesn't get any "fresher" than that. Under the iPhone options I have it sync with iCal and whenever I create an event in iPhone and sync back up, those new events do not show up in iCal.

As an aside, any contacts updates I make do work...

 

[dreamteam]

I have to admit... as a PDA, the iphone isn't particularly strong.

Compared to the other features on the iphone, PDA functionality is somewhat just "average". It doesn't have anything revolutionary or obviously superior over RIM or WM5 devices.

I use Google Calendar as my central calendar... I then sync it with iCal, thus my iPhone. For me, it's sufficient. But I think this is an area that Apple didn't dare to get too creative with.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

It does an okay job for me. This is the first PDA I've ever had, though, so, compared to nothing, it's great! It is doing a great job of keeping everything in my life organized more so than I used to be. I used iCal before the iPhone came out, but I really like having all that information with me. I wouldn't carry a separate PDA, so this works out great.

I, like others, would like to see multiple calendars introduced, with color-coding on the phone for each calendar, just like in iCal. Some sort of search feature might be nice, too.

I did have one problem setting it up. Somehow, even though the option was set to the calendar "Play" all the events that I created on the iPhone went into the "US Holidays" calendar, which is uneditable. So once events got in, they couldn't be changed. It took me removing that calendar, messing with syncing a couple of times, and then readding that calendar for it to work. Since then, it's been great.

 

[HeavyC]

I think it works quite well. I use my Google Calendar as my safe source for my work (Lotus Notes) and my home (iCal). Everything syncs to Google ultimately.

At work, I sync up my Lotus Notes to Google using CompanionLink. It's not perfect, but it does the job. I had some funky double events and some issues with recurring meetings that have existed since last year, but everything I've created or altered since the first sync has worked pretty flawlessly.

At home, I run Spanning Sync on my iMac which syncs iCal up with Google Calendar. I don't really ever open iCal at all. Spanning Sync runs once an hour or so and keeps iCal concurrent with Google.

Any new events I add to the iPhone get processed nightly when I sync back to my iMac, and then appear on my work calendar the next morning when I run CompanionLink. So far, so good.

 

[matthewHUB]

Great posts all of you!!!

Thanks so much for the info. So if there isn't a search feature, doesn't it get a bit annoying? Say you put an event in, and somebody asks you a week later "hey, when's that meeting for the _______? Let's meet the day before that..."

any useful workarounds?

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

Great posts all of you!!!

Thanks so much for the info. So if there isn't a search feature, doesn't it get a bit annoying? Say you put an event in, and somebody asks you a week later "hey, when's that meeting for the _______? Let's meet the day before that..."

any useful workarounds?

Pray that you're at your desk when that happens so you can search in iCal?

The "List" view in the iPhone is my favorite view, and would allow you to scroll through things decently quickly to find an event, especially if you either didn't have a billion things a day in there, or if you had some idea of the day of the meeting in question.