SaiSuke – Google Calendar Sync for the iPhone
As I’ve written before, I am a big user of Google Apps for Domains services. This includes e-mail and contacts, but also calendar services. I have tried a lot of online calendar services, but Google’s calendar meets my needs the best. The big down side has always been the lack of proper mobile support. Google does have an iPhone interface to the Google calendar system, but it’s very limited in functionality.
When I got the iPhone I was hoping to be able to sync it with my Google calendar via iTunes, but no such luck. That may work on the Mac version of iTunes, but it does not on iTunes under Windows. So I haven’t had good access to my calendars on my iPhone. Until about a week ago.
I recently found SaiSuke in the iTunes App Store. It is a replacement calendar application that syncs wirelessly over the air with the Google calendar service. It does not integrate with the built in iPhone calendar, as the iPhone SDK does not support interaction with the native calendar. So I simply moved my native calendar off to an unused page, and replaced it with SaiSuke.
There are two versions of SaiSuke, free and paid. I went directly to the paid ($10) version, although the free version may suffice for some users. The primary difference is that the paid version allows one click synchronization of multiple calendars. Because I do in fact use multiple calendars (Birthdays, Personal Appointments, Business Appointments, etc.) this was a useful feature for me and worth the price of the application.
The application works wonderfully and the only complaint I can think of is that it does not support creation of recurring events on the iPhone. Recurring events created in the Google calendar web application show up fine, but you cannot create new recurring events. There is a local “SaiSuke” calendar that supports creating recurring events, but that doesn’t help me. Since the whole point of the application for me is about syncing my iPhone to my Google calendars, I don’t even use the local “SaiSuke” calendar.
I’ve contacted their support organization about this and have been informed that they are working on this functionality and will have it in a future release. The only other “nice to have” feature I can think of would be support for the new Google Tasks feature, but that’s a bit of a reach since it’s still a part of Google Labs.
If you are a Google Calendar user with an iPhone, I highly reccomend SaiSuke. And since there is a free version there is no risk in evaluating the product and then purchasing the full version if needed.