Calengoo

Calengoo is now my preferred choice of iPad Calendar replacing Calvetica 4 (or Calvetica Calendar as its now called in the app store). I recently updated the Calvetica review saying why it is no longer my preferred choice.
So moving swiftly on to my Calengoo review. Calengoo is not the best looking calendar out there. When you first open the app you may almost be a little disappointed with the appearance of the month view. Its quite bland and basic but it is clear to see your events/appointments and clarity is more important than looking pretty when it comes to the crunch. Also you may have to play Witt the font setting a little in the iPhone version to make it readable without zooming if you want to use it that way. For me, the best looking views are the portrait and landscape day views. Landscape being my personal fav for looks but portrait being my main view for functionality. I have actually asked the developer if its possible to have the all day bars from the landscape view in the portrait view as they look awesome. It's a partly opaque bar the runs vertically from top to bottom of the day rather then grouping the all day events at the top of the day. I like this bar as it really draws your attention to the fact there is an all day event on which ever day you are looking at.
While we are on the subject of graphics, it is one of the weaker points with the iPhone version of the app. There just isn't enough screen space for the month and landscape day views with the current design. The month view for iPhone needs to be reworked to maybe look more like Week Calendar or Tapcal or even Pocket Informant (Tapcal would, for me, be the preferred look for a month view as I feel it has the best month view of all calendars I've tried but cant get close to the functionality of the best ones) as I'm less keen on having to pinch to zoom or scroll the month view in landscape to make it readable. The landscape week view needs to either move or lose the top and bottom bars when the device is rotated. Here a lesson from Pocket Informat would be well applied moving the bars to the sides of the screen when rotated and rotating the buttons so they are the right way up.
These comments may sound really negative but that's not a case it's really bad to the point of rendering the app unusable, it would just improve the app making it even better than it already is.

So now to talk about where Calengoo excells and why its my iPad Calendar app of choice. It's the functionality. Quite simply, I haven't found a more functional and configurable calendar app out there. So if you want a calendar app thats for power/business use for your iPad then look no further. All the usual essential options like default event duration, default reminder(s), default calendar to assign new events too are covered and then there are literally more additional options to setup the app than you could shake a stick at. Fortunately the developer had the foresight to stick 4 buttons at the top of the Display and Use section of the app setting ranging from basic to all so it makes it more friendly for those that dont want to play about too much.
To give an example of how configurable the app is, not only can you change nearly every font, cell type colour to modify the look a bit, you can even tell it to open straight in the event title entry rather than the usual event details "list" screen. It also has the option to search you contacts as you type in the event name/title then if it is one of your contacts you are creating the event for you just tap that contact and hey presto, the details, contact number, address etc are all filled in for you. You can change how many characters need to be entered before it will search contacts in the settings but I like the default of 3 characters. If you are creating an event like, "Gym Work Out" that you put in around your work at varying days and times every week, you can add it to a template to make the creation of this event type quicker. The templates are fantastic on this too. I previously thought Week Calendar had the best templates until I discovered Calengoo templates. If you edit the template you can check or uncheck exactly which details you want to use from the event for your template making them very flexible and functional. Pocket Informat could learn a lesson here along with anyone else who wants to have template functionality in their calendar app.
Calengoo allows you to set you working hours and show this in several different ways, you can display the sunrise and sunset times too if you so wish (I like this last option as its useful for me as a driving instructor), you can set which days are your weekend, which day your working week starts on, the options really do go on and on and many of the options are set individually for the different views so if you want your weekends darker in the month view than they are in the day view you can. If you want a different font for week view to month view you can.

Calengoo as the name suggest syncs with Google Calendars and it does a great job of that. But if you dont want to use or even don't have a google account thats no problem. I moved away from Google Calendars to iCloud when it became available and Calengoo works just fine with that too. In fact, it's with iCloud that Calengoo incorporates one of my favourite and now must have options. When you open Calengoo, it prompts your iOS calendar to refresh and pull in any new appointments. The only other Calendar apps that I've tested so far that offer this feature are Week Calendar (iPhone only), Pocket Informat and Calvetica Calendars. My iPad is WiFi only and I dont like having to open the iOS calendar app to refresh and see if I have any events created on my iPhone or any events my other half has put in that I need to be aware of. iCloud push is some what unreliable I've found as sometimes it does work and other times it doesn't. So another big tick in the box for Calengoo. Another thing I like to see and feel have been let down with Calvetica is the customer support. The peeps at Calvetica are very polite but don't seem to deliver. Calengoo's developer(s) however give first class customer service normally getting back to me within 1 working day for any questions, suggestions or problems I've had in the past and actually implementing fixes and changes too.

Over all for me Calengoo is now on the bottom bar of my iPad as my main iPad Calendar and has been on and off as my main iPhone calendar app recently. Week Calendar being my other iPhone choice. With some changes to the iPhone ui it would be hands down my iPhone app of choice too but either way it's still my most recommend calendar app currently available on the app store. So if you are serious about a calendar app thats going to give you a good functional service and is a single purchase for both iPhone and iPad versions then look no further.
4.5/5 from me and would give it full marks with the iPhone appearance being improved.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad


Images as shown on the Calengoo website