We’re close to the end of the year, and that means getting ready to toss out your old calendar and buy a new one. Instead of buying a physical calendar this year, consider using your smartphone as your go-to planning device. You’re probably always going to have it on you, and with a handful of great apps, your phone can do things that a normal calendar could never do.
We’ve compiled a list of the best apps available for your Android phone or tablet, some of which add in some features that the stock calendar app on your device may not have. Keep reading to check them out.
Business Calendar is an app that’s been available for Android devices for quite some time, and it has evolved with features almost as much as Android has. It congregates all of your calendars (stock phone calendar, Gmail calendars, etc.) into one interface, and that interface is fairly simple and offers several different views for looking at your calendar. You’ll get the standard monthly view, weekly view, and daily view, but you can also get a look at your agenda for the week, which displays any events in your calendar for the current day and several days in the future. This is a really handy feature for checking on what events need your attention in the near future.
Another very unique date view Business Calendar offers is a multi-day view; you simply drag your finger across multiple days and you’ll be able to see all of them in a single view. You can use this to view two weeks at a time, check out your events for only Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, or any combination of days in your calendar. If you’re the type of person to cram tons of events into your calendar, this can help sort through the mess and information overload that comes from viewing a week’s worth of planning at once.
Aside from the interface, Business Calendar is packed with other features. You can quickly and easily add certain views as favorites, search your entire calendar, color code different calendars and events, and small things like adding certain contacts to events and an add-on to manage your to-do lists from other apps within Business Calendar. If you like having your calendar set up as a widget on your phone to quickly glance over throughout the day, Business Calendar has more widget options than you can shake a stick at, and that always goes a long way towards an excellent Android app.
Business Calendar is free and ad-supported, but you can buy the paid version of the app for just $4.99, which completely removes ads from the application. The free version contains all of the bells and whistles of the paid version, however, so if you’re in the market, you should definitely give it a spin.
Play Store Download Link (Pro)
Touch Calendar is a pretty unique calendar that takes full advantage of Android’s multitouch gestures and abilities. Almost the entire interface is gesture driven; pinch-to-zoom will zoom in on events, long-pressing a date to add a new event, and scrolling throughout the calendar is nearly infinite and very smooth. This gives the app a unique feeling for a calendar that makes it seem almost like scrolling through web pages or a photo gallery, but considering those are two things that many people do everyday on their devices, it means Touch Calendar is very natural to use.
On the backend of things, Touch Calendar pulls calendar events from your Google calendar, so all of your Gmail events, birthdays, etc. are tied together in Touch Calendar and color-coded accordingly. Throw in a few extra features like being able to invite contacts to events from within the app and quick searching through all of your calendar events, and you’ve got an app that can very quickly help you get more organized.
If you’re into widgets, Touch Calendar has you covered in the pro version. It doesn’t feature as many different kinds of widgets as Business Calendar, but you do get lock screen widget support on devices running Android 4.2 and up, which is a very nice bonus. The free version of the app lacks the widgets, but since the pro version is less than $3, it’s a worthwhile upgrade if you find that you like Touch Calendar’s very intuitive interface and navigation.
Play Store Download Link (Pro)
Sometimes, you just want that stock Android experience for your apps. No gimmicks, nothing fancy, just an app that’s designed the way Google wants apps to work. If you have a phone that’s running some custom skin (like most phones on the market currently are) you may just not like the built-in skinned calendar app. If you’re in that group, you’re in luck, as the calendar is one of the apps that Google has released individually onto the Play Store for any user to download. It’s pretty much identical to what you’d find on a Google Nexus device, for better or worse.
You’ll get all the baked in features that Google intended, including a pure Holo interface, excellent scaling for tablets, and very tight integration with your Google account’s online calendar. It does offer a few unique features that most other calendar apps don’t, such as being able to color code individual events without changing the color scheme of an entire calendar. Since this app combines all of your calendars into one place, this can be pretty helpful for sorting out single events that are more important than others.
Google’s calendar has many of the basic features that other apps offer, such as pinching gestures and searchable calendars, but it lacks some of the more advanced features others may offer. You’ll still get Google’s standard Android resizable widgets, although I personally think they’re not very aesthetically pleasing, but they do get the job done. Plus, it’s a Google app, so it’s free.
If you’re an Android purist or you just need something simple for your calendar, give this one a spin.
The makers of Any.do, the extremely popular to-do list app, recently released Cal, their version of a calendar app. It’s an excellent app for many of the same reasons Any.do is a great app; the interface is amazing, it’s simple to use, and it’s got just enough features to replace several apps at once.
For the calendar interface, Cal mixes a calendar view with a to-do list view. Tapping a date will give you a list of things you have setup to take care of that day that you can check off, and it supports many extra features, including repeating events and integration with Any.do. If you’re looking for an app that integrates a todo list and calendar, it’s really tough to recommend anything over the combination of Cal and Any.do. The two apps work perfectly together to stay synchronized and keep your schedule organized.
That’s not to say Cal can match every other app with features, however. It’s missing a few things like color-coded calendars on the month view, but it more than makes up for it in other areas. The app integrates very nicely with your social media, pulling contact information from your phone to make all of your events easy to plan from within the app. If bad interfaces irritate you, Cal should be your go-to app. The developers put a ton of effort into polishing it up to look its best no matter what you’re doing.
Cal also features some deeper integration into other apps, including Google Maps and Uber, if you live in a location that’s supported. Google’s calendar doesn’t even support Google Maps like Cal does, so give them some credit there. It’s a free app, so definitely don’t pass on this one.
Go Calendar is a bit different from the other calendar apps on this list. The biggest thing that separates it from the other apps is that it’s not a standalone app that you can navigate; the only way you’ll use Go Calendar is through a widget on Go Launcher. At first, that sounds like it might not be such a great option, but if you’ve ever played around with Go Launcher and the widgets that accompany it, you know that they’re just as robust and powerful as many separate apps.
A majority of the calendar functions can be done from the home screen with Go Calendar, including scrolling through months, checking events on an any date, adding new events, etc. Adding an event will open up your default calendar app to actually fill in the details, but everything else can be viewed and managed without ever opening an app. If you’re looking for a way to sort your calendars and search for specific appointments, Go Calendar may not offer enough for you, but if you only want something clean and simple to glance over from your home screen (and you’re using Go Launcher), Go Calendar is tough to beat.
As an added bonus, there are several different layouts and themes you can select from; you can choose to make the calendar either light or dark, and you’ll get the choice between a 4 x 4 or 4 x 3 layout, or a smaller calendar that lists your agenda for the next few days.
If you already use Go Launcher, you probably have played around with Go Calendar before. If you haven’t, you’re definitely missing out on an excellent calendar app.
These are five of our favorite calendar apps that should help you stay organized in 2014. Did we miss any that you’re planning on using next year? Drop a comment and let us know what your favorite calendar apps and widgets are.
Come comment on this article: Best Android calendar apps for phones and tablets [December 2013]
Powered by WPeMatico
