[Note: Calvetica 2.0 was updated a few weeks after this 1.0 review was written. You can read the impressions on 2.0 here.]
I’ve seen some mixed reviews of Calvetica ($2.99) over on Twitter, but I quite like this app. It has single-handedly made calendar usage faster and more fun on my 3GS, and it has completely replaced the default Calendar (MobileCal.app) on my first home screen.
Calvetica syncs with the iOS calendar database, so any changes you make within the app will be reflected immediately in the Calendar app, and vice versa. This also means that any event alarms that you set in Calvetica will trigger a default calendar alert, instead of some third party notification.
The only major downside worth mentioning at this point is that Calvetica only syncs with one calendar, so if you’re one of those people that needs more than one calendar, you’ll have to wait for Calvetica’s feature set to play catch up. Otherwise, read on.
Month View
Unlike other specialized calendar apps, Calvetica only shows you a month and day view, in that order. You can jump from month to month or even year to year using the controls along the top of the screen, and you’ll see the current calendar month just below them. I should say that it’s worth jumping between months just to see the excellent animation of all the dates switching places on the calendar grid.
Dots on each day will indicate the number of scheduled events, and tapping on a day will bring you into the Day view. Below the calendar days you’ll also find two more buttons: one to jump to Today, and another that shows your recent or upcoming event alarms.
This month view setup has worked just fine so far, but I’d also love to see a preview of the day’s events by tapping and holding (or even just tapping). This detailed at-a-glance information is really all that’s missing from the month view.
Day View
Everything I’ve described in Calvetica thus far has been fairly straightforward, but the Day view was really where the designers really came out to play, I think. Instead of tapping some sort of “new event” button, you actually tap on the time slot of your event, name it, and then press done. If your event doesn’t start on the hour, you can tap on the actual hour (9 PM, for example) and set your event to start at :15, :30, or :45 into the hour. I realize these intervals were likely selected because they’re the most common (and they keep the interface clean), but it would probably help if users could also specify an exact start time for an event.
Setting an alarm is very similar to setting the start time: you simply tap on the alarm clock next to your event, and tap on all of the alarms that you want active. Alarms range from five minutes before to one month before, and you can activate all 12 alarms for an event, if you really, really don’t want to forget.
You can tap and hold to move and paste events (though this only works for creating events that start on the hour), or you can use this gesture to head right into the details to write a note, edit the name, or set the event to repeat at a regular interval. Unfortunately, there aren’t any indicators to tell you whether or not an event has a note, or is set to repeat. A manual check is currently your only recourse, and I definitely hope this is addressed in a future update.
Conclusion
There are still a few subtle differences between Calvetica and the usual calendar options you might be used to. All Day Events are currently unsupported (they simply start at 12 AM) and end times for events are simply ignored. Calvetica doesn’t show a haircut 30-minute haircut that starts at 3:00 and ends at 3:30 — it just shows a haircut at 3:00. I actually rather like these differences (end times have always been a bit of a PITA for me), but they’re probably worth mentioning, since they likely won’t work with everyone’s workflow.
However, despite being its status as a ‘mere’ v1.1 app, Calvetica has already totally won me over. There’s something about the combination of the font choice, minimal design and colour scheme, and alternate approach to scheduling that really works for me. I was never quite at home with the default Calendar application, and if you feel the same, then might I suggest you give Calvetica a download. It’s just $2.99, and it even has an excellent video walkthrough right here.
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Calvetica was provided by Nimble Design for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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