iCloud vs Google apps

A question comes to both newbies and advanced users of iOS – which data service to sync with? Most prominent options are iCloud vs Google apps: gMail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts.

Our personal advice is iCloud, and here is why.

iCloud vs Google Apps in regards with contacts syncing benefits

Google Sync (which is actually an implementation of Microsoft Exchange) on iPhone simply doesn’t rock. It doesn’t support adding custom fields. Besides that, there is a major bug with displaying contact pictures:

When you add a picture to you address book, iPhone syncs it back to Google server. However, Google does not store a high resolution photo. As a result, when calling the contact you don’t get the nice full-screen contact pictures of your contacts.

iCloud does not have any problem storing high resolution photos of your contacts. And it does support custom fields – you can even introduce them from your device.

Another benefit of iCloud for contacts syncing is that it allows you to easily create groups. However, you will need to use iCloud website to setup your groups.

You can organize your contacts into any logical groups, i.e. Work, Classmates, etc. This is a handy feature if you want to send group messages.

It is also useful to have Groups feature with Do Not Disturb setting in iOS. You can silent all alarms, except for calls from your selected group, i.e. Relatives.

Privacy benefits

iCloud does not scan your email messages in order to provide relevant advertisements. Google does. If you care much about your privacy, select completely ad-free solution, which is iCloud.

Features

Of course, Google Calendar and gMail are very feature rich applications. But if you are used to work with mail using desktop applications, you will never find the difference. Besides, any desktop client adds features of its own, so things get matched up in terms of features whether you are using gMail in browser or iCloud’s email in Mail.app on OS X.