I have disabled all google play services, and quadrupled (!) my battery life. For the calendar, I installed an “offline calendar” backend that works fine.
There is only one catch: Whenever I start the calendar app, I get the message “Enable Google Play services - Calendar won’t work unless you enable Google Play services”. The app won’t start.
I know it’s a lie, because the calendar does work using the offline backend. But I cannot bypass the message to start the app. My only workaround so far is
Enable google play services
Start the calendar
Disable google play services
Always use the already opened calendar.
Repeat after each reboot
There is an xposed module that promises to fix this (here), but the xposed framework sounds very experimental for Android 5, and I don’t know half enough to risk it on my phone.
Do you have any other suggestions how to bypass this message?
My main doubts about switching the calendar app are transferring the current data into it.
Otherwise, it’s just very annoying that I cannot use a well-working app because of a pointless message.
Your Calendar app is Google Calendar because your are running FP OS (not FP Open). Although it doesn’t need to use Google Services, it actually require them (it’s on purpose).
Disable Google Calendar app and switch to an AOSP-based Calendar app, like Etar. Don’t worry, calendaring data is only stored on Offline Calendar app*.
*= More technically, any calendar frontend connect to the Android calendar provider, which connects to Offline Calendar to get the data.
I have looked at the FP open website, but from what I got there, I didn’t have the impression it was already stable and “ready to use” for “regular users”
Ah, wish I had known that a few days ago. Is there a really easy way to backup contact/calendar/message data on the regular OS and restore them on the FP OS, via SD card? Because moving from FP1 to FP2 was such a pain, I don’t want to repeat this experience.
Do you still have the FP1 with the data on it. That would be easiest because then you could use Titanium Backup.
If not I believe there is also a quite easy way to export the data from the Google cloud, but someone else would have to explain that to you.
I recently upgraded my ownCloud instance to NextCloud and did a local backup of my data, so I think I can help you with the transition to FP Open. First of all, install F-Droid to download below cited apps:
Contacts: Open your Contacts app → Open the three-points menu → Import/export. I’ve discovered that this only seems to work with an SD card (urg, I should report that bug). If it doesn’t, just use Export Contacts.
SMS messages: I usually use SMS Backup & Restore, whichs is a proprietary app. To me it doesn’t matter very much because I cut its access to internet with NetGuard for privacy reasons. Slight Backup seems to be a libre alternative, but I can’t guarantee it works great.
)