The current state of PIM on Android

[NamelessPlayer]

I don't have an Android device yet (due to the high cost of the Samsung Galaxy Note GT-N7000, and that's the only one that interests me at the moment), but I might as well plan ahead when it comes to software.

Back in the Windows Mobile days, I really liked using PIM through the Today screen with the help of plugins like SBSH PocketBreeze or Spb Diary. No need to launch an app; I had practically complete PIM control right from the Today screen. Does any sort of equivalent exist for Android?

There's a version of Pocket Informant for Android, so that should add Palm OS/Windows Mobile-grade functionality, though it doesn't include any nice Home screen plugins to use as a frontend. Have any of you here used it?

For notes, there's Papyrus, though that isn't exactly compatible with my OneNote notebooks. Unfortunately, OneNote Mobile is NOT an option due to how crippled it is compared to the full Windows version; MobileNoter, however, may be the ticket if it utilizes the Galaxy Note's Wacom pen properly for digital inking.

As for syncing the PIM data, I would prefer a local sync option if at all possible. It might be tough given how Android emphasizes Google services and always-on Internet connections, and I won't be using the Galaxy Note with phone service at all.

Also, on a not-quite-PIM-related note, there's a Graffiti input panel for Android out there. Problem is, Graffiti 1 never allowed for custom strokes, resulting in more than a few muscle memory issues (especially going back and forth with Graffiti 2 devices years ago). TealScript corrected that rather nicely, but I never really saw anything like it on any other OS. Is there anything even vaguely Graffiti-ish on Android with customizable strokes? (Bonus points if it supports the Galaxy Note's Wacom pen natively.)

Basically, I want to know if the software is there to make the Galaxy Note act as "PDA 2.0", like I'm hoping it will. This is basically the device I wanted years ago when I was fiddling with the X50v and hx4700, but hardware means nothing without software.

[headcronie]

Smooth Calendar widget will provide a decent homescreen today style calendar widget. https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...mNhbGVuZGFyIl0.

[Hook]

You can put together almost anything you need PIM-wise, but there are a lot of choices, apps, widgets, cloud solution, etc, and it will take you awhile to figure out what works best for you. You can see from my sig my current solution, though as I find new things or get new needs, it can change again.

Pocket Informant is not anywhere near where the WinMo version was. I believe even the forthcoming 2.0 will only do calendar and tasks. There claim is that development on a new platform isn't any faster than on a previous platform, so it is really like you are looking at PI 2 for Win Mo all over again. I'm not sure I buy their design philosophy, and I got too frustrated waiting for what I needed. Maybe later.

There are many home screen widgets. I use Pure Calendar Widget to give me a scrolling 30-day agenda (appointments and tasks) on my home screen. There are many others. Other things you have to consider are things like I use Calengoo in part because it uses it's own data base instead of using the very crippled default Android data base.

So there are lots of choices, but it makes things complicated to figure out and one of the things that has been lost (which PI may eventually solve) is that PIM syncing is not fully integrated, although most apps can do auto-syncing. On the other hand, OTA syncing is truly delightful.

[Varjak]

Great new thread. This is a big issue for me as well. Something I think about 2nd in my list of important functions I'd be using Android for.

Just a note (pun intended). I finally got to play around a bit with a G Note. It's a great device; but it's HUGE. I don't know why a relatively small screen difference (4.7 v 5.3); but the Sprint Evo 4G LTE was mostly very comfortable to use; but the Note is gigantic; but not big enough to be a 'real' tablet. I love the idea of the stylus; but otherwise, I'm at a loss as to how I'd use one for the most part. I certainly wouldn't carry it around in place of an iPad or Android tablet like a Transformer.

[weegie]

If you forget what and how you did PIM on winmo, don't mind cloud syncing, don't mind disjointed third party bitsa apps of which some like companionlink are very expensive, you might be happy, personally, I think PIM is Androids worst vice because I am neither going to sync OTA or with Google, iOS/iTunes is 1000 times better imho.

Varjak, the diagonal doesn't mean much with different aspect ratios, as we discussed a while ago with screen area differences between the Note and SIII

[NamelessPlayer]

Just a note (pun intended). I finally got to play around a bit with a G Note. It's a great device; but it's HUGE. I don't know why a relatively small screen difference (4.7 v 5.3); but the Sprint Evo 4G LTE was mostly very comfortable to use; but the Note is gigantic; but not big enough to be a 'real' tablet. I love the idea of the stylus; but otherwise, I'm at a loss as to how I'd use one for the most part. I certainly wouldn't carry it around in place of an iPad or Android tablet like a Transformer.

The Galaxy Note, fortunately, still manages to fit in my pants pockets in spite of its size. That's why it's still a contender for me. (Besides, I had the huge hx4700 in the past...)

Were it not for that, it would lose a lot of its appeal when I could just carry my HP 2730p instead and do things with a 12" screen and full-fledged Windows.

While we're at it, what apps actually make good use of the "S-Pen", other than the default Samsung stuff (which may actually be useless if the Samsung ICS ROM apps use cloud servers for handwriting recognition instead of running it locally)? Having Wacom Penabled hardware in there is pretty sweet, but not of much use without software support, after all.

[Varjak]

Weegie, I remember you mentioned the difference in area (about 4 sq. inches I believe); but until you see them side-by-side, I don't think most people can comprehend the actual physical difference. Yes, I'm well-aware of the AR issue too. I'm just saying that the Note is somewhat awkward (and those must be some serious pockets). It would be amazing for some things like in-car navigation, and at meetings, etc; but there's the carry around issue. I also don't see it being great as an e-reader. Not to mention, you'd most likely have a case with it, which bulks it up further. And at a meeting, I think I'd still want the larger tablet. I'm not saying no one could ever find a Note useful; just that I cooled off on it significantly when seeing it in person. It doesn't really fit my likely uses.

[NamelessPlayer]

I got to test a Nexus 7 for a bit, though I have to ship it over to my friend tomorrow.

What this has shown me is that the stock Android PIM situation is...lousy, to put it nicely. While there's a rudimentary calendar app, there isn't even a task/to-do list app that I can find (no, not even Google Tasks of all things), let alone a note-taking app.

I'd try out Pocket Informant, but it's payware with no free trial.

MobileNoter sounds great in theory, but the reviews suggest that in practice, it doesn't work very well, if at all. It really makes me wish Microsoft didn't give Android some emasculated version with no inking support in place of the real product us Tablet PC enthusiasts love.

Input panel-wise, Graffiti is exactly what you'd expect coming from the Palm OS. I wonder how they can distribute the original version in spite of the courts ruling in favor of Xerox's unistroke patent trolling and thus resulting in Graffiti 2; on the other hand, Windows Mobile's Block Recognizer was Graffiti 1 in all but name, and Microsoft got away with it.

There's also a similar alternative called G-board, but it has the same failing in that you cannot customize the strokes and have to adapt to existing ones, some of which are slightly different than the Graffiti 1 equivalents. I'm really starting to miss TealScript now, and at this rate, it looks like I better learn to write my own equivalent for Android if it's going to happen at all.

All in all, it really shows that Android is far more geared toward consumption than productivity, in stark contrast to the Newton OS, Palm OS and Windows Mobile before it. The current selection of apps have not struck the balance just yet.

[Hook]

There are actually quite a few good PIM apps out there. What there isn't is integrated PIMs, so you are going to have to combine several different PIM apps out there such that it will take a while to find them. Both Pocket Informant and Pimlico (the latter not in Market yet) are moving towards having all four PIMs, but they aren't there yet. I'm about to re-look Pimlico with direct Sync. You can see from my sig that my current solution (which is quite nice, by the way) is quite a patchwork. Currently, the only integrated PIM suite is Deja Office.

On the handwriting front, Swype Beta now has a handwriting input mode and, since it is now owned by Nuance, a very nice voice recognition input mode. I think the ruling for Xerox was in some manner reversed, but I forget the details.

I've said it before. In evaluating Smartphones and tablets, you can't directly compare them to PDAs. They did not evolve from PDAs. They evolved from cell phones and media players. hence, it is no surprise that their primary forte is media, internet and communication. That does not mean that they are not quite usable for productivity or that there aren't developers out there trying to create tools. However, you are going to have too look for them amongst everything else and figure out what you need to do to get things to work they way you want.

[NamelessPlayer]

Funny that you mention the lineage of such devices, because back in the day, I was using my PDAs in a similar manner to how people use current smartphones and media slates today with quite a bit of Web browsing and media playback, just with older hardware and software that just happened to have more productivity options. Of course, I had to push them harder in capability because I had no laptop or Tablet PC at the time, which made me really thankful for things like SoftMaker Office (which rivaled desktop MS Office in capability and thoroughly spanked Documents To Go, which was well-suited to editing, but not creation from scratch).

Samsung's apparently loaded quite a bit of productivity stuff onto their Galaxy Note ROMs that I might want to look into, especially as of the ICS update; it's not like the existing Android software base would have been able to use the Wacom digitizer anyway, so they had to show it off themselves. Unfortunately, it's hard to evaluate it without actually having a Galaxy Note.

And if push comes to shove, I suppose now's a good time to learn how to develop Android apps, because it's very unlikely that anyone else will make exactly what I want.