I’ve been looking for a way to sync my Google Calendar to my iPhone using the native iPhone calendar app. Google has come out with (I have no idea when this came out, so I may be late to the party here) a calendar and contacts sync to the iPhone native calendar and contacts apps using Microsoft ActiveSync. Cool!
I set up the Calendar as a test – ActiveSync is a proven technology, so I expect this to work well. So far it does.
Detail instructions on the setup are here http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html. The setup is very simple, just set up an exchange account on your iPhone, give it your google credentials and sync to m.google.com.
Only contacts and calendar are available at the moment – it will give you an error if you try and choose to sync your email. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see google turn up activesync for email too.
This is the kind of thing I love about Google. Most other mail providers would not go the extra mile to allow contacts and calendar sync without a cost. This is totally free and works well. Score!
This is a great feature. It is just another example of how well google has been at developing tools and products that capitalize on the things we do every day, by creating an essential missing link between a need and a service.
The only bummer with this particular issue is that the iPhone only allows you to have one ActiveSync process. So, if you are already syncing to an Exchange server, like me, you’re out of luck.
It’s the first cut – it may get better with 3.0 and beyond!