My choosen Project of August 2014: Davdroid
I am a lazy person, so calendar and contact syncing is important for me. If i get to know someone new and want save contact information, i just add him/her to my phones contacts. Because i often reset my phone (for reasons ;-)) or fear to loose it, syncing is very important for me. The same goes for calendar and appointments – so it is crucial for me to record an appointment on one device and get remembered on all my others.
I used to to that with Google’s services for some time, but after i changed my mail provider for Posteo, i need a sync solution. Posteo, as most services, supports CardDAV and CalDAV for syncing. So does my MacBook and my Linux Desktop (using Evolution). Android lacks CalDAV and CardDAV syncing. I think it is pretty clear this is a strategical decision by Google, it makes Google’s Services simply stand out. On the other hand,Androids open nature allows developers do write “Sync Adapters” that provide syncing capability for the build in calendar and contacts. DAVdroid is such an application. It enables me to securly sync my calendar and contacts with my european email provider Posteo.
DAVdroid is open source software, developed by austrian company “bitfire”, eg. Ricki Hirner and Bernhard Stockmann. It is available on several app stores as a paid app: http://davdroid.bitfire.at/download for 2,99€ (including Google and Amazon). Thanks to its open source license, it is also available on Fdroid. If you, like me, installed from Fdroid, i encourage you to consider a donation that a least matches the price on the stores. I just now donated.