Google Calendar vs Gboard - the Google Keyboard

The app leverages Google Maps when adding location for an event by offering suggestions as well as offers opening Maps to help get directions to an event via shortcut on a reminder notification.

Google Calendar is a free Android calendar app without ads that comes already installed on Android devices that have stock support for Google Services.

Google Calendar has a monochrome base design that's accented with colored-coded events and image banners that separate months in schedule view.

The app has 5 different views - schedule, day, 3-day, week and month.

Day, 3-day and week views split up the days horizontally and hours vertically. Month view lays out all days in a grid and displays up to 3 events in a day.

Schedule view displays an agenda view that allows browsing all events by swiping vertically. Additionally, the way events are displayed in the agenda view is context-aware. For example, adding an event called "gym" will display the event on a background with a dumbbell.

All views except for month view can be split horizontally to display a condensed month view at the top that can be navigated by swiping horizontally.

Events can be added from any view by clicking the red plus button that's available at the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Google Calendar integrates with e-mail for quickly creating events from e-mails that contain the word "meeting" or dates or times, or any other information about events or plans that it can understand.

Google calendar allows setting how many reminders are needed with each having the ability to set how long before the event the notification should remind and if it should be done via on-screen or e-mail notification.

Google Calendar is part of the Google ecosystem, it integrates with services like Google Now for creating events, Google Maps for directions and Gmail for pulling information about planned flights.

The app will color-code different calendars in different colors as well as allow selecting a different color for each event.

All views have an option of adding a new event by tapping the plus sign at the lower right corner of the screen. This opens up a form and allows the user to add a location, start/end times, guests, description, color-code as well as choosing if it's an all day event, how often it repeats, how many and what kind of reminders are needed and setting the users availability and privacy settings.

Whenever you enter agenda / event title with the keywords (when available), the event will show up interesting flairs whenever the keyword inside the agenda / title you typed matches the flairs that are available inside the system, examples such as haircut, cycling, swimming, coffee, movie etc.

Through the Google Calendar's web client, it is possible to subscribe to any public calendar. Google also maintains a list of public calendars for various sports events and holidays in different countries and for different religions.

Google Calendar can be integrated with any calendar that support iCalendar format, including Exchange and iCloud, via URL, but it has to be done using the web client.

Google Calendar comes with a home screen widget, and there are also many third party widgets developed for this calendar app.

IFTTT offers over 198 channels to plug into the users Google Calendar.

The Google Keyboard supports swiping along the keyboard to spell out whole words.

After using a gesture a few times and clicking the correct word, Google Keyboard learns that the gesture should result in the word you've manually selected as the correct word. Swype doesn't seem to learn this, so even after 100 times clicking 'this' instead of 'thesis', it still produces 'thesis', where Google Keyboard learns that you meant to say 'this'.

Google Keyboard has material design themes the user can skin the keyboard with.

Hold down the key in the lower left hand corner and a keyboard if punctuation appears. Swipe over to the one you want, lift your finger, and the original keyboard pops back. It's very fast, and makes it much easier to spot the punctuation mark you want - instead of trying to squint at the secondary symbols in the keys.

This keyboard is not a free trial nor will it hold back any new features to sell you a paid version. The keyboard is completely 100% free.

While other keyboard options may be very functional, their visual design tends to differ from the rest of your Google device. The Google Keyboard was designed by Google and it looks like it.

Alternative keyboards tend to suck up system resources, often making them nearly unusable on older phones. Google Keyboard is very quick to open when typing and the keys rarely lag.

The keyboard has button that allows searching Google straight from the keyboard, and use the search results in the currently used app.

The GBoard has an emoji search that's very convenient, saves time looking for a specific one if you don't know/remember what category it's in.

The dynamic floating preview appears while gesture typing. Most gesture keyboards only show the preview above the keyboard in the suggested corrections. The dynamic floating preview is great because it makes it easier to gesture type by keeping your eyes focused on what you are typing.

For those that are used to typing on a Dvorak keyboard or prefer not to need multiple key presses to access special symbols they can enable these as additional quick switch options. Using the English PC layout for example gives the user a number row.

Makes it easier to type with no more than a thumb.

Google keyboard does not promise to be as "smart" as other keyboards besides offering a personalized dictionary. Surprisingly this is actually a good thing for some because with many "smart" keyboards predictions and corrections actually worsen over time. With Google Keyboard the experience will remain constant because it requires you to manually "touch again to save" before it changes your personal dictionary. This prevents mistakes from becoming part of your personal dictionary.

Most Android devices have GBoard installed.