Calendr Is A Fast And Intuitive Calendar For Your iPhone

BY Christine Chan on Thu January 12th, 2012 Calendr Chocomoko Productivity

Calendr ($1.99) by Chocomoko is a fast calendar for your iPhone.
Even though the iPhone comes with it’s own Calendar app from Apple, sometimes it’s not enough. There are plenty of apps out there that make the calendaring experience better on your iPhone, whether it’s providing a better interface or making adding new events easier. Calendr does both.
Calendr is integrated with the default iOS calendar, so there is no additional setup required. When the app is launched, you get presented with a beautiful and clean interface, which I actually preferred over the native calendar.
At the top of the screen, you will see how many calendars are currently being shown. A small button in the top left corner allows you to toggle which calendars are displayed in the app. There are three different views that users can switch between with the bottom menubar: Month, Day, and Week. Two more buttons on the bottom menubar allow you to jump to Today, or even search for a specific event. And of course, adding a new event can be done at any time (from any screen) with the + button in the top right corner.

The Month view is pretty standard – you get a view of the month, and a small section underneath the month will display a selected day’s events in a list view.
The Day view is actually my favorite view, as you get a split view: on the larger left pane, you get the standard day view (event blocks and time of day on the left), and on the right, there is a separate pane with a slider that shows you what chunk of the day you are currently looking at. As you scroll up and down on the day, the currently selected time block will appear highlighted on the right side. This gives you a quick glance at what part of the day you are looking at, which can be useful.
The last view is Week, which is your pretty typical fare. In the top bar, all-day events are shown, and underneath will be your regular event blocks. In both Day and Week view, if you are currently in a time where no events are scheduled, a numbered indicator will appear at the top or bottom of the calendar to let you know if there are events scheduled. It’s a nice touch, and definitely a nice thing to have in case you forget about something while planning something else. Swiping left and right in Day and Week view will also help you navigate through days and weeks, respectively.
When you add a new item, the design of the “New Event” screen is clean and has just the basics that you need. Give the event a name and location. Then things get interesting once you go to pick out a date and time, since the app uses a method called “Quick Pop.” Simply tap and hold on the date or time (hour or minute) that you want to change for the event, and a new screen will pop up with a slider for picking the date or time. Slide it to what you want, let go, and it’s changed. Repeat this for each element until it’s what you want. There are four buttons underneath the start and end time that will allow you to reset it (to the current hour by default) or adjust the event by 15 or 60 minute intervals.
I felt that this is a more intuitive way to adjust the start and end times of an event. Instead of spinning a dial (which can be a bit tedious if you are trying to get something in quickly), you just tap and hold, then slide your finger to the time you want, and you’re done.
Other details for a new event include: toggle for All-Day events, timezone selection (over 23,000 cities to choose from), repeat cycles, alarms, calendar, attendees, availability, URL, and notes. Tap on the “Done” button to save it to both Calendr and your native iOS calendar (and whatever syncing solution you’ve picked).
Whenever you tap on an event in Calendr, it will take you to a screen that displays the details of that event. There will also be options to delete or edit the event, and even share it by email.
You can quickly jump back to the current day in any of the three views with the Today button. If you are looking for something specific, try searching for it with the app’s Find feature.

Calendr does not have built-in settings. Instead, you will find the settings for the app in the native Settings. However, there’s only one option found – a toggle for 12 hour clock specifically for the Day view.
By default, Calendr uses 24-hour military time. The biggest issue I had with the app, though, is that even if I had the 12 hour clock option on, the app itself would still do 24-hour time when creating new events. I would rather have it be either 12 or 24-hour time for both displaying events and creating new ones – it’s called consistency.
Despite that, I found Calendr to be a breeze to use. It’s elegant, slick, and entering in new events is a breeze. It’s noted in the App Store description that it is optimized for one-hand use, which is great for busy people.
If you feel that the default Calendar app isn’t quite enough for you, then give Calendr a try. It’s off to a good start, but could use a bit more polish before being my main calendar app (and perhaps universal?). I’ll be keeping it around just to see how it evolves.