Getting iCloud To Work On An Android Device
I got an interesting call from a new customer recently. She got a new Windows 8 PC running Microsoft Office 2013, an iPad Mini, and a Samsung Galaxy S4. She was already using the Windows 8 PC with Outlook 2013 and she wanted the contacts and calendar entries from that to replicate to the other devices. This on the surface wasn’t easy as we’re talking about three different ecosystems here. Windows, iOS, and Android. Now getting the Windows PC and iPad Mini to speak to each other was easy. I could simply install the iCloud Control Panel For Windows and have it replicate the calendar and contacts from the Windows 8 PC to the iPad Mini. The question was, how do I do the same thing with the Galaxy S4?
I did some research and came across some apps made by Marten Gajda on Google Play that would do what I wanted. Specifically these:
Because She was running a Galaxy S4, she also needed two additional pieces of software. That’s because of this bug:
“The bug causes accounts of paid apps to be removed when Android boots up. To work around this issue this app pretends to provide the same account type that SmoothSync for Cloud Calendar provides. That’s enough to convince Jelly Bean to keep the account.”
So after installing everything and setting up her iCloud accounts, everything worked as expected. All the devices were able to data and update data to and from iCloud. Thus proving that it is possible for an Android device to sync to iCloud, strange as that may seem. If you have the need to sync an Android device to iCloud, feel free to try this method and let us know what happens. The apps are ones you have to pay for, but the total price is under $10 for all of them and the results indicate that it’s well worth it.
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