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Google Calendar's app for Android has been updated with new controls for selecting time, date, timezones, colors and editing repeating events. I wonder if the next Android version will use these controls instead of the existing pickers.

Selecting the time is a 2-part process: you first select the hour and then the number of minutes. The time picker is based on a real 24-hour clock.



Selecting the date is straightforward: Google uses a scrolling calendar that's great for picking a date from the current month or next month. If you want to pick a date from a different year, tap the year and you can quickly switch to 2014, 2015 or any other year.


Here are the standard time/date Android pickers that were previously used by the Google Calendar app. "Each picker provides controls for selecting each part of the time (hour, minute, AM/PM) or date (month, day, year). Using these pickers helps ensure that users can pick a time or date that is valid, formatted correctly, and adjusted to the user's locale."


And here are the original pre-Honeycomb pickers:


The control for repeating events looks much better. "You can now set events to repeat every Tuesday and Thursday, every month, or every 7 weeks, it's completely up to you," informs the Android blog.


Now you can pick different colors for events and calendars:


There's also a different way to select time zones: instead of showing a long list of time zones, countries and regions, Google Calendar lets you enter the country name and it displays the relevant time zones.


I've found it easy to compare the old and new controls because my phone has both the stock Calendar app and the Google Calendar app from Google Play. It's a good idea to disable the notifications for one of the apps if you don't want to get multiple notifications for the same event.

Last year Google added a new color palette for Google Calendar and many users complained. Some of them thought that the new calendar colors make it difficult to tell events apart, while other people wrote that they're too muted.

Now you can customize calendar colors. Just click the arrow icon next to a calendar in the left sidebar, click "choose custom color" and pick your favorite background color. Select "light text" if the text is hard to read.




"Google Calendar users have had the ability to change the colors of specific events or calendars from a default color palette. Users can now choose a custom color if the default palette does not meet their needs," informs Google. This feature is also available for Google Apps.

Google+ has a new feature: support for creating and managing events. Instead of copying Facebook's similar feature, Google decided to release a cutting-edge feature that's miles ahead everything else.

Google+ Events integrates with Google Calendar, has support for beautiful themes and it's not just about creating events. The most interesting feature is called "party mode" and it automatically brings together all the photos taken by the guests. "Once you've enabled Party Mode on your mobile device, all of your new photos get added to the event in real-time. And as more guests turn on Party Mode, more pictures will instantly appear to fellow invitees. In this way Google+ Events gives your party a visual pulse; we've even added a 'live slideshow' you can proudly project during the event," explains Google.


When the event ends, you can see everyone's photos in one place and filter them by popularity, the photographer or the tag. It's a great way to manage your photos, but the guests need to have Android phones and install the Google+ app.

Speaking of the Google+ app, it's now available for tablets. Right now, you can only install it if you have an Android 3.0+ tablet, but the app will also be available for the iPad soon.


Google says that more than 250 million people have upgraded to Google+ and the number of active users is 150 million. The active users spend about an hour per day at google.com and 12 minutes in the Google+ stream. Launched one year ago, Google+ seems to be pretty successful.

Google Calendar updated the color palette and you can now choose from 24 colors that match the new interface. "The color of each of your calendars has been updated to use the closest possible color from the new palette. The new colors will only be available in the web interface (for example, you won't see these colors if you're accessing Calendar via your mobile phone)," informs Google.




It's worth mentioning that the new colors are only available if you use Google Calendar's new UI. To switch to the new interface, click the Options menu in the navigation bar and select "Try the new look". You can always go back to the old UI from the same menu.


{ Thanks, Cougar, Ralph and Herin. }