This shouldn’t really be a surprise to most people that have been using Cyanogen OS. Seeing as Boxer and Cyanogen teamed up earlier this year to bring Cyanogen Email. Now it looks like they’ll be getting rid of Google Calendar as a default app and using Boxer’s instead. Which is actually pretty good for those that use Gmail as well as Exchange or other email providers. Seeing as Boxer supports all of them. So you can have all your accounts in one app. Pretty neat idea there. However, if you really want to use Google Calendar, you still have the option of downloading it from Google Play as usual, and plugging in your Google Account(s) to use it.
Boxer’s calendar is material design, so it does look an awful lot like Google’s Calendar. And has pretty much all the same features, aside from the fact that it does get updated a bit more often than Google Calendar does. Starting with Cyanogen OS 12, Google Calendar will no longer be pre-installed on their devices. You’ll be looking at Boxer’s calendar to go along with Cyanogen Email that’s powered by Boxer. If you want to try out Boxer’s Calendar and you are not using a Cyanogen device, you can also download that from the Google Play Store.
So it looks like Google Calendar is one of those apps that is not required for Google’s certification. While Cyanogen’s CEO Kirk McMaster has famously said they want to get away from Google. And in fact, it was announced earlier this year that Cyanogen and BLU are going to be making an Android smartphone together that uses none of Google’s services. If we look at recent history, those types of smartphones have not done all that well. That also makes us wonder, what App Store are we going to get on that smartphone? Will it be Amazon’s App Store, or Cyanogen’s own App Store. So far we haven’t heard anything about this collaboration between BLU and Cyanogen since it was announced they’d be working together. So we’ll have to wait and find out a bit more in the next few months. But it sure is interesting.