Re: [Evolution] Shared contact info between Android/Google contacts and Evolution

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

>         Hi,
> you didn't indicate what version of evolution (-data-server) you are
> using,

Sorry, my bad, I'm running EDS 2.30.3.

>  but the upcoming 3.0.0 depends on latest libgdata and supports
> most (if not all) of the fields you named above. The Google
> addressbook backend was also massively rewritten by the libgdata
> developer for 3.0.0, thus expect some improvements too.

Excellent! It looks like the missing fields were added as part of
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=602244 ; and the groups were
added as part of https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=566441 (I
was kind of assuming that groups would map to address books, but I can
see now that categories might be the better mapping, since one Google
contact can be in multiple groups, same as one Evo contact can be in
multiple categories).

Only thing missing looks like the photo support for contacts, which is
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=619135 , and would be a nice
touch, especially as people often seem to attach photos to contacts on
their smartphones.

> Also, take a look at syncevolution + mobical.

Thank you for the heads up! Experience has just made me a bit wary of
relying on a SyncML server. For example, I thought ScheduleWorld was
great, then a month after I set everything up to use them, they changed
from being free to being paid without telling me, so that I couldn't
sync any more, and then they went out of business completely 17 months
after that. Now it looks like Mobical are gone and have been merged
into/bought by/rebranded as Everdroid ... and their android client only
has 100 to 500 downloads, and just 6 reviews, and the longest list of
required application permissions I have ever seen. And an alternative to
this is to set up and maintain your own SyncML server, which I have no
desire to do.

So I think I'll just wait for Evo 3.0.0, as that gets me 99% of the way
there, and then I'm only relying on Evolution and Google, and I'm okay
with that, as I'm quite sure they'll both be around in 5 years.

-- All the best,
Nick.