Due to the amazing interest shown in my ICS Reader app for Android, I have decided to actually release it! For now, here is the APK of ICSReader.
I may well release the code, but I’d have to have a quick look through it first.
After having ranted quite a bit about the lack of support for standards-based calendars and PIM in Android, I decided to implement something myself, to at least get it to a level where an Android phone would be of use to me. Since we have a functioning iCalendar export from our Oracle Collaboration Suite calendar at work, I decided to start out writing a parser for that. ICSReader is the result.
The software does a bit more than just read iCalendar files by now, and since it’s reached the critical junction where I want to expand the functionality significantly, the time has come where it gets its very first version number: 0.1
The very first version, 0.1, has the following features:
More importantly, it lacks the following features:
The observant reader will have noticed that I have yet to provide a link to this software. Currently, it’s only been built for Android 2.0, and while it may serve a purpose for some people in need of an iCalendar reader, it is not yet sufficiently polished for me to feel comfortable in publishing it. If you happen to need it, post a comment, and I might well reconsider and post a usable build. Otherwise, I am going to work towards a new version with at the least support for multiple iCalendar sources before releasing it.
Got some new features you really want in an Android calendar application? Post a comment, and I’ll have a look. 🙂
Update: I released the app.
A short while ago, I asked what Google were going to do with PIM in Android. Now it seems there’s an answer, or at least part of it, in the release of the Android 2.0 SDK: They’re going to support third party adapters.
The nice people at Engadget have a summary of some of the changes, and among them one can find:
Hopefully, this means they’re actually going to start working on some nice built-in adapters as well, but at least it seems they’re opening up the sync parts of the platform from 2.0, contrary to what had earlier been reported. Yay.
From the early days of palm-top devices, through early smartphones like the Nokia Communicator, and up to all the iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys of today, what the serious users have been looking for has always been PIM: Personal Information Management. They are looking to have their email, calendar, contacts and notes available at all times, on a small portable device. Indeed, as am I. I have been using my Nokia N95 for a couple of years now, and there really is something to be said for having my calendar with me at all times, just by the virtue of carrying my phone.
So what have Google done with Android? They’ve put Google Mail, Google Calendar and a Contacts synchronization to Google Mail in their fine mobile operating system, which goes some of the way. They have also, I am told, put in a regular IMAP client, for those people who don’t use Google Mail, for instance for corporate email. But, it seems, the fun ends there.
There’s no direct support for SyncML, and nothing, it seems, for Exchange. Sure, you can go through Google Calendar for your calendar syncs, and I presume you can forward your mail to Gmail – if your corporate policy permits that. But when it comes to direct sync for third party providers, no luck.
It’s starting to look a bit like what some of us have criticized Apple’s software for doing: If you don’t use it like Steve Jobs does, you’re out of luck. In this case though, even more so: If you don’t buy into Google’s services, no luck with Android’s default apps.
So someone could just develop a sync adapter for the built-in calendar. The source is available under the Apache license, so why not? Here’s why: Google have stated that the API for the built-in Calendar is not public and not going to be for 1.6 or 2.0, which leaves a worrying question: Are Google only going support their own services from the base OS?
It’s certainly not completely unthinkable, as Android has been hailed as an open platform, so anyone can just code a Calendar app, right. Right? Well, maybe. But selling smartphones with no proper PIM solution for anything else than a single provider doesn’t seem like a viable business to me, and I really do hope Google make up their mind to do things differently, and support direct over-the-air synchronization with SyncML, CalDav or even Exchange systems.