Calendars 5 – will the App Melt the Heart of non Calendar User

Calendars-5-BlogI have to reveal one secret. I have not used calendar app on my phone for years.

How do I remember all my meetings and other things? I just remember šŸ˜‰

I don’t have a lot of meetings, due to my aggressive neglecting of meetings and since I live one task and one event at a time, it is easy to check dates from Google Calendar or even better from the calendar hanging in our fridge door.

Anyway, that is the half of the truth. The other half is that I have not found calendar application that would be easy and fun to use. I have not found calendar apps to be helpful for my life – so far.

..

When I heard that Readdle has published new calendar app called Calendars 5, I though that it is now time to give another chance for a calendar on my phone and in my life.

I am already familiar of Readdle through their Documents App. I have used it in my iPad and I find it pretty useful, clean and stable.

The completely new Calendars 5 app replaces their earlier Calendars + App, which wont be available anymore.

Can Calendars 5 convert hard-boiled non calendar renegade to fashionable calendar user?

Well, lets see.

The new app looks great. Readdle hasĀ designedĀ it for IOS 7 and it follows the design principles of IOS 7.

I must admit that the app looks pretty neat to my taste. It is fresh, smooth and light. Exactly like IOS 7.

Other features according to Readdle are:

  • Task management with lists and tasks
  • Tasks can be synchronized with IOS reminders
  • Local and Google Calendar syncing (for one account)
  • Works completely offline
  • Available for iPhone and iPad
  • Complex recurring events (“every second month of the year on weekdays of the 1st, 2nd and last week”)

Calendars 5 can understand human language. Type “coffee with John next Wednesday at 10 pm” and app will add the event for next Wednesday at 10 pm. Is it handy? I don’t know. I somehow find it easier just pick a date from the calendar, but time will tell. Perhaps it is faster to just type in human language what you want, but for that I need more practical experience.
ā€¦

On my iPhone 5 Calendars 5 works smoothly. In App store someone had complained about slowness and crashes. While I have used it, it has not crashed even once and app works without any delays or slowness.

The quality of app feels good.

Calendar can be viewed in four different views. You have views for the day, week and month like expected, but what I found most interesting and usable was list view.

In a list view events and tasks are in chronological order.

You can scroll events up and down in time, future events are downwards and history is on top. Bottom of the screen you can see the exact date where you are in and you can even swipe left or right to move between dates even faster. List view is Ā the coolest view of the calendar.

In options you can choose different sounds for the alarms, default opening view for the app and different kind of default values, like when you are reminded by default (15 minutes before or something else), what is the default length of an event etc.


Readdle has succeeded well to make an app that is simple and intuitive to use. When you add events, extra information is revealed when needed. Start typing the title for the event and after that selection forĀ the start and end date will appear. You don’t need to fill everything. You can save at any phase.

..

I think I have found Calendar app for myself. It was somehow fun and weirdly comforting to add events to Calendars 5. I have chosen to use list view, I am syncing with Google Calendar and I try to use human language to book events.

I am going to use the app and report back to you, if Calendars 5 will become new habit for me.

%d bloggers like this: