[Discuss] Syncing Android phones directly

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On 06/30/2013 07:13 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 06:56:39PM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
>> I asked this question a year or so ago, and I'm hoping to get a better
>> response this time  now that more people have Android phones.
>>
>> I'm finally making the jump.  Probably next week or the week after I
>> will be purchasing a Samsung Galaxy S4 32GB through AT&T (opinions on
>> that phone welcome, opinions on A&T  are not).  I've researched it to
>> death, and the one thing I wish I had more real-world information on is
>> how people sync the contacts/calendar/notes/etc from their phone to
>> SOMETHING.  That something may end up being Outlook under Windows, but
>> of course something under Linux would be better.  Whatever I do, though,
>> I don't want the data going through Google servers, or to leave my
>> intranet at all.
> If I were buying an S4, I would go for the Active variant solely
> for the water and dirt resistance. 

I thought about that, but the Active is a MAJOR setback in other areas;
no LTE, 8MP camera (and fewer camera modes) vs 16MP, STFT instead of
AMOLED screen, 16BG only, almost half of which is taken up by software
you can't remove...

> As for the rest, you need DAV support, basically, and CalDAV exists.
> Oh, and icalSync2 just showed up in the market; it says it can
> sync your calendar with an ical file available through HTTPS,
> FTP, or WebDAV.
>

Hmm.  I'm already running ownCloud (http://owncloud.org/) on my server
which has CalDAV and CardDAV.  If I can get *that* working that would be
fantastic, because I could sync whenever I want, and have access to the
same cal/contacts from any browser!  I'm not currently using the
contacts from there, but I am using the calendar for the family calendar.

http://doc.owncloud.org/server/5.0/user_manual/pim/calendar.html
http://doc.owncloud.org/server/5.0/user_manual/pim/contacts.html
For Contacts, they say Install cardDav- Sync free from Google play store
by visiting this link-
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dmfs.carddav.sync

I'm a little fuzzy on how CalDav and CardDAV work, so I've never used
them (well I tried getting the calendar to sync on my iPhone but it
never worked). 
- When using CalDAV, is the calendar stored locally and synced when I
say, pr must I have internet access to read the calendar from the server
all the time?

- How does one deal with field alignment, of one calendar (or address
book) has fields the other doesn't or they're named differently?

Thanks!