Still don't understand how Android doesn't have built-in support for CardDAV/CalDAV. It's built-in on iPhone. And the built-in ActiveSync support has been left to wither and die.
It's surprising that it's built-in on iPhone (though unsurprising that e.g. the support built into iCloud is so poorly documented).
Generally, supporting open interoperable standards that make switching providers easy is bad for business, so I'm generally a lot more surprised at where it is supported, rather than at where it isn't.
FWIW I sync my Android data with my iPhone (personal -v- work devices) using the FDroid DAVx⁵ and ICSx⁵ apps, rather than the author's one-time export solution, and they seem to work ok.
> Generally, supporting open interoperable standards that make switching providers easy is bad for business
It was one of the reasons I switched from Android to an iPhone. It's really annoying to use Android if you don't want to use Gmail and Google Calendar, while on iOS it's super easy to use a third party for email, calendar and password manager.
But that's of course just an anecdote, I'm sure you're right and it in general bad for business.
100% agree. Apple gets a lot of flak for lock-in, and they are bad, but nowhere near as bad as Google.
I've run an Android phone without any Google account at all (something that's not possible on iOS), using a combination of FDroid and Yalp to work around the lack of Play. The fact that this is possible lulls people into this idea that Google is more open, but the reality is it's pain. You're locked out of many basic phone features, notifications are flakey, many updates don't work, and once you do opt into a Google account it invades every part of your phone's experience.
At least with iOS I can sign up for a fresh empty apple account and it leaves the rest of the (admittedly limited and very locked down) phone to me.
It was the same for me. Somehow, once you look past the fact that everything is at Apple's mercy and I can't make an app that runs on my phone unless I buy a computer I don't want to run a desktop OS I don't like (boo!), iOS actually better implements Android's promise of openness.
Apple is in a position where they can't expect everyone to be happy with iCloud, which is great because it means they actually put effort into supporting (decently!) a range of third party services. Siri generally isn't as smart as Google Assistant, but it also isn't completely obsessed with Google services. That is to say, unlike Google Assistant, every app on my phone - without exception - actually knows what is on my NextCloud calendar. And it actually gets useful information from my email to do helpful things with.
On the other hand, if you look at how Android has progressed over the years, I think Google has been trying very hard to forget about Android's past as a flexible operating system that exists outside of Google's ecosystem.
> On the other hand, if you look at how Android has progressed over the years, I think Google has been trying very hard to forget about Android's past as a flexible operating system that exists outside of Google's ecosystem.
They don't even try with the stuff they extended android with, Android Wear and android's Daydream: no third party stores allowed, only loading via ADB.
Installing an app is no problem, and I was using a calendar app that worked okay. But I was unable to find an email app that I liked and all the password manager apps worked (or work) by (ab)using an accessibility feature that had a pretty severe impact on the performance of my phone.
And uninstalling an app is impossible on stock Android, if that app is made by Google.To achieve that I had to unlock the boot loader of my phone, for which there was no official method.
Meanwhile on iOS I can use the default mail and calendar apps that work fine and my password manager integrates perfectly with the os, while I don't need to use iCloud at all if I don't want to.
Those 3 apps weren't the only reason to switch from os, but they did make the choice for, and switching to, iOS a lot easier.
You need to unlock your bootloader, install custom recovery (TWRP) and then install a custom ROM (I use LineageOS). It's optional to install Google into AOSP-based ROMs.
You need to find instructions based on your specific device. Each one is different.
I personally really disliked how iOS hides the underlying filesystem and directory from me so I never went back to iOS. I have an iPad I received as a gift and while it's really nice in terms of usability, I don't like how cumbersome transferring files is in 2022. The weird quirks of Android are smaller issue if I can just mirror the entire internal storage to my installed sd card. I also dislike how the web browser on iOS is so locked down. Having an operating system behave really similarly to a desktop operating system makes me stick with Android in the long term. The open nature of Android means that the "missing" features can be added relatively easily, like the DAVx⁵ and ICSx⁵ apps. I also use FolderSync to sync phone/sd storage with cloud backup. In fact FolderSync can talk directly to NextCloud.
> Generally, supporting open interoperable standards that make switching providers easy is bad for business, so I'm generally a lot more surprised at where it is supported, rather than at where it isn't.
Exactly this. Google makes it very, very easy to have everything synced to a Google account on Android devices: just log in and it just works. You contacts, mail and calendar are all immediately available on your new device. If they'd implement CalDAV in an easy manner, it would probably be a more viable option for less tech-savvy people.
What the parent commenter said: from a business perspective it doesn't make sense to implement it.
Fortunately there are some good, relatively simple to use apps available to implement it for us.
>rather than the author's one-time export solution, and they seem to work ok.
The reason why a simple one-time export was my go-to solution, is because I really don't want my data on Google's servers. In the blogpost I explain how to import the data to Nextcloud and use that as a 'single source of truth'. Other devices can then sync up to your nextcloud instance.
I don't have an iPhone, so I'm not sure how/if this would work on iOS, but I am sure that it's possible to sync it up in a similar manner.
you're right, iphone can have carddav accounts, but you can't migrate easily to a selfhosted carddav account even on Apple.
If you want to transfer contacts from the main addressbook you have to go through iCloud and export to vcf for a full take, last time I checked on iOS 12 I wasn't able to copy between addressbooks. Sorry if this has changed.
But while Android can't do other carddav accounts by itself, you can export the .vcf on-device. So while Apple offers to embed another carddav account, the migration story is not better but worse.
It's at least seamless by installing a single app, Davx5. Alternate Android distros like Calyxos come with Davx5 pre-installed, so it might as well be built in there.
Yeah, though I've found with Pixel software, it's still a bit annoying because Contact/Calendar apps will always show your Google account first, then keep prompting you to turn sync back on if you turn it off, etc. Flash your own ROM and you get a perfect experience there, but you get a whole new set of problems. These tradeoffs are a lot of why I moved to an iPhone this month for the first time since the 4S. Say what you will, but iOS integrates with Fastmail like it was built for it.
Google doesn't want you using anything besides Gmail, plain and simple. Adding an ICS feed is ridiculously complicated--you have to add it on your desktop in Gmail, and the on each phone you have to manually enable the calendar. Why wouldn't they just have the ICS feed enabled by default?!
I've had to do 'subscribe to calendar' work on a few projects. With iOS, I can just give someone a link to ical data, and it checks whenever they check. It seems, in the google world, you giving a google product your ics/ical link, it gives it to google, which may check it then, then... periodically polls that link on google's schedule (which may be hours or days in between) with no ability to force the google products to poll for updated info.
Is there some trick to get google products to regularly poll (or poll on demand) for updated ical/ics info?
There is CardDAV sync built in to iOS Contacts, but I don't think the person who programmed it actually tried using it. When you create a contact on the iPhone, there's no reasonable UI for putting it in a group (it can be done, but it's ridiculously hard); and only contacts in groups are synced via CardDAV. So in essence you can't create contacts on the phone.
I can very easily, using only built in apps and set up, share a calendar, a todo list, a photo album, a music playlist, a note, an e-mail account etc. with my wife.
But I cannot share a contact list with her without resorting to complicated CardDAV setups.
Wait before you see the implementation of tasks on the google side. If I add a nextcloud tasklist to IOS. Siri can add tasks to it, ez pz. On a google phone there is no way to add tasks to nextcloud tasklists with voice commands. Not so OK google.
Same with the built in Mail and Calendar apps in Windows. On my Mac I can connect to my NextCloud/Mail-in-a-box natively but on my gaming PC running Windows I had to install Thunderbird.
iPhone has *DAV it because iCloud uses it for Calendar and Contacts as well. Android has only EAS because most companies use MS Exchange. There is no need to support CalDAV for the Android develops.
Generally, supporting open interoperable standards that make switching providers easy is bad for business, so I'm generally a lot more surprised at where it is supported, rather than at where it isn't.
FWIW I sync my Android data with my iPhone (personal -v- work devices) using the FDroid DAVx⁵ and ICSx⁵ apps, rather than the author's one-time export solution, and they seem to work ok.