Can someone explain why S60 3rd phones do not sync the categories you have in Outlook, despite supporting categories within the phone itself? The built in PIM doesnt do sync it and neither do Acquacalendar nor Papyrus.

Is this yet another basic feature being "saved" for a feature pack or something?

There's no categories support in the Calendar on S60 3rd Ed. devices as far as I can see. How do you figure there is?

As far as I know you can have categories in Papyrus at least. Whatver the case, its is a pretty obvious omission if Nokia claims to be able to sync Outlook in full.

Hell even my alarms do not sync properly either.

This is the kind of basic things that will let Apple come around and eath their lunch.

So, Apple syncs perfectly with MS Outlook? ;)

So, Apple syncs perfectly with MS Outlook? ;)


I will sync perfiectly with something ie an Apple. Meanwhile Nokia is dicking around and people will go buy other stuff. I wont be shedding any tears when they lose customers.

For a supposedly "business-oriented" phone to not be able sync Outlook categories or calendars fully is just a big joke.

There was a press release this Friday that Nokia's Enterprise group designing E Series phones is to lay of 300 people because it isnt doing well.

Lets just say I wasnt surprised - they are not taking care of basics even. This syncing stuff is not sorted and the phones dont sync with OneNote or Outlook Business Contact Manager. If Nokia isnt supporting Macs then they lest they could have done was support PC's properly!

Where exactly is the limitation? Is it Symbian? Is it S60? Or just the calendar- and sync application?

Both calendar engine/database (Symbian) and the sync engines/interfaces on both device and PC.

Both calendar engine/database (Symbian) and the sync engines/interfaces on both device and PC.

So this is not primarily a Nokia or S60, but a Symbian issue?
Has anyone already tried an enhancement request or a petition for calendar categories to symbian? (I am new to this and have no idea how responsive Symbian is to enhancement requests)?
Coming from Palm and Windows mobile, losing calendar categories is the main issue for me.

Found one at S60.com:
http://www.s60.com/life/wishlist/displayWishDetails.do?wishId=731&activeCat=7
Dont know if it helps. This one has 25 votes now, for 1st place we would need more than 745 votes, but need only rise to 76 for 2nd place.
Make YOUR opinion count!

Sorry for discussing this issue with myself, but I just checked the information on the Symbian Developer Network. When searching for 'calendar categories', the first document I get is called 'Using the new Symbian OS v9 Calendar API', see
http://developer.symbian.com/main/downloads/papers/Using%20the%20new%20v9%20Calendar%20API.pdf
There you will find the following:
"The Calendar API replaces the Agenda API that was present in versions of Symbian OS prior to v9.1,
and provides functionality according to the standard RFC 2445, which defines the iCalendar standard,
a common format for openly exchanging calendar and scheduling information across the internet.
"
...
"3.3.5.6 Categories
One or more category types, defined in TCalCategoryType, can be associated with calendar entries.
The predefined types include: ECalAppointment, ECalBusiness, ECalHoliday, ECalMeeting, ECalMiscellaneous, ECalPersonal, ECalPhoneCall, ECalSickDay, ECalSpecialOccasion, ECalTravel and ECalVacation. The type is specified when the category object is created.
Categories are used similarly to attendee lists, with a CCalCategory object and AddCategoryL() and CategoryListL() methods.
The CCalCategoryManager object can be used to add or delete user-defined categories and to filter calendar entries by category asynchronously."

For me, this sounds much like the Symbian OS calendar database does support calendar categories from V 9.1. So this would mean, that just the S60 calendar app is ignoring it.
But I am not a Symbian programmer, maybe someone more into this could double check this?

Got some news on this from PocketTorch, the makers of AquaCalendar. They already use native Symbian categories. For syncing them with Outlook, they offer AquaSync.