I was using many different mobile devices during last years. Some were GSM phones, some were PDA, now I use Nokia N900 which tries to join both functions.
When I saw calendar on N900 I thought: Is it some cruel joke? But then I got to simple conclusion: designers and developers never used anything newer then Nokia 5110 and never saw (or heard) about PDA devices. I do not see other reason for creating such brain damaged application.
What it supports? Simple events in few local calendars with simple repeat, simple only predefined alarm times, todos (without priority). User gets unusable month view + nearly not usable week view + agenda view. And desktop widget which does not allow any configuration. Probably even PalmOS 1.0 DateBook was more advanced (I would have to check on PalmPilot 5000 which I have in basement).
What it lacks? List would be quite long but I will list few most important things:
- custom alarm times (I like 1:15 alarm times) — now it does not even display such properly
- edition of repeatable events without breaking repeat cycles
- extended repeat possibilities (like: 1st Tuesday in month, every 3rd Saturday)
- remote calendars
- portrait view
- configurable work hours in week view
- day names in date picker (PalmOS like chooser instead of iPhone like rolling lists maybe)
- search function
- attendees support
What makes situation even worse is amount of reported bugs against Calendar. Many of them got resolution ‘MOVED’ which is other word for WONTFIX as it looks like everything which lands in so called ‘brainstorm’ area of maemo.org website is on a list of things to forget.
So far there is only GPE calendar which can be used instead of Maemo one but this one does not have working alarms (without running it in background or using ugly GPE summary widget). Platform is so niche that there will be no commercial application to fill that hole and that’s sad. And I do not require port of PalmOS Agendus (the most advanced PIM I ever used on mobile devices) but something usable.