Showing posts with label smartphone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label smartphone. Show all posts

Saturday, March 10, 2012

The Trouble with Sync

Previously I’ve mentioned that I have finally joined the Apple crowd and gotten myself an iphone [blog entry]. Most of the initial fears from the transition has largely gone away. However, my biggest annoyance was around google calendar sync feature.

Finally figured it out today:
http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139206

So if you have multiple google calendars like me and want to figure out how to set it up to work with iphone, take a look at the instructions above. I was able to select multiple calendars to sync for my iphone and ipad and can use the native calendar app (even the colors carried over). For the longest time I’ve been searching various calendar apps and instructions for overcoming this issue.

If I get new devices again I can go back to this page and remember how I resolved it.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Phone Adventures

Earlier in 2010 I wrote about my first smart phone (entry). As my plan is nearly up and I had an opportunity to check out new devices, I took a spin in the Verizon store with J. Kudos to him for giving me good advise on my first smart phone. For the second smart phone, I didn’t end up going with either suggestion (HTC Rezound or Razor Maxx). With all the hype around 4G phones and huge screens, I was joking that before long we’ll all be carrying ipads and using them as phones. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Incredible but when it comes to new Droids, I just wasn’t all that impressed. So I ended up getting the iPhone 4S. No 4G, no droid, and no huge screens. It’s all good.

Since I’ve had the iPad for a while, I was already familiar with the setup of the iPhone (let’s face it, the phone/text part isn’t that hard). And since I had already started to clean up my google contacts (getting ready for switching from smart phone to smart phone), the contacts sync didn’t take too long either.

Things I miss from the droid:
-ringtones: I know this isn’t impossible but it just seems harder on an iPhone.
-music management: I’m awful with my iTunes music library and sync ever since I got my first iPod back in the days, so it’s been a lot of drag&drops with the SD card and amazon mp3 store with my droid. this led to my iPhone music library completely empty until i figure out the sync/org part. My iPhone has 1 song in it, from the free single of the week, no joke!
-contact search: while the iPhone contacts page does have a search bar at the top, it doesn’t allow for easy search using the numbers pad like droid. Fewer misdialing?
-better support for multiple calendars: I did find a few iPhone apps that take multiple google calendars but for now, I haven’t committed…
-different skins/themes. you know how you can do a “travel” skin with travel apps and “work” skin and “social” skin (at least with HTC)? yea, none of that…have to make do with the “folders” or limit my apps (which isn’t a bad thing).

Things I like from iphone:
-it’s the same as my ipad. ok, so this is not a plus if you haven’t used either the iphone or ipad before…
-imessage/text is much cooler.
-more fun apps that I’ve already had from my iPad. now I can take them on the go too!
-less confusing interface than some droid features.
-this is not really a big deal…but you do get better case selection for iPhones. I actually didn’t even bother with a case for the HTC. just went with a screen protector and that’s it. For the iPhone I got a red/black gradient hard rubber case with screen protector. May ditch the screen protector after a while since I’m not thrilled with it.
-Siri

IPad vs iPhone:
-facetime integration is better on the iphone
-Siri rocks. and apparently my English is not that bad (or they’ve improved it since rolling out)
-Zite looks 100 times better on iPad than iPhone. I suspect it’s the typography or the top bar showing the diff categories in the iphone version that makes it not as clean.
-I’m trying not to go overboard with copying the iPad apps since some apps are much better on ipad than iphone (i.e. Vevo or magazine apps).
-why is Muji Calendar free on ipad but not iphone? sigh.

Read my previous post on ipad reading apps.