When setting up a new Samsung Galaxy phone, you’re usually deciding between two options: Samsung Calendar and Google Calendar. While Google Calendar may seem more appealing because it works across multiple platforms, I still prefer Samsung Calendar for three key reasons that, in my opinion, make it the better choice.
More ways to customize
Customize your events more to your likings
Google Calendar lets you customize your view in several ways, but when it comes to tailoring the experience to your preferences, Samsung Calendar still comes out ahead. Side by side, Samsung Calendar simply offers more control.
In Google Calendar, the main customization option is changing the color of each calendar. While there are plenty of colors to choose from, complete with playful names, that’s largely where the personalization ends.
Samsung Calendar, on the other hand, offers deeper customization not just for your calendars, but also for individual events and alerts. These options range from small visual tweaks to more detailed adjustments that make organizing your schedule feel more personal and flexible.
Change the theme of your calendar
For starters, you can customize the overall appearance of your calendar and how information is displayed. This includes everything from how text appears in your calendar view to how bold or muted event colors look.
You can also adjust smaller details, such as font size and whether event text curves when viewing the full month layout. While these may seem like minor changes, they make a noticeable difference in how I interact with the app and in how I personalize it to my liking.
Customize alert’s background
Another area you can customize is alerts and reminders. While they aren’t technically calendar events, reminders are integrated directly into the app experience.
These alerts can be personalized in two ways: by choosing from one of five preset gradient backgrounds or by using your own photo as the background.
While the customization options are fairly minimal, it’s still nice to personalize the alert background. It comes in handy when adding a photo as the background, since it helps the reminder stand out from a distance, as the alert takes over the entire screen.
Brand your event with an emoji
Another way Samsung Calendar stands out is with event emojis. While it may seem like a small detail, adding emojis to events makes it much easier to identify them at a glance without needing to read the full title or description.
For example, you could place a briefcase emoji next to work meetings or a pencil emoji next to classes if you’re a student. Personally, since the weather has been getting warmer, I’ve started adding an ice cream emoji to plans with friends so I can instantly spot them on my calendar.
I’ll admit I only recently started organizing my events this way, but it has genuinely helped me understand my schedule more quickly. This is especially true when my calendar starts to get crowded, and titles don’t show in full.
Weather information is available
An easier way to view how the forecast is looking for your events
One of the most important pieces of information I like to know when planning something, like a hangout, is what the weather will be. As the weather gets nicer, this information becomes more valuable with more outdoor activities being scheduled.
This is why I love having the weather visible in the calendar’s month view. Enabling it lets me quickly see upcoming conditions through simple weather emoji that represent the forecast. For example, if it’s going to be sunny, a sun icon will appear, while rainy days will show a rain icon.
If you want to view more weather information for a specific day, just tap on it to see details like the high and low temperatures. However, the calendar only displays weather forecasts for the next seven days, so you won’t see weather information for past dates or days farther out.
While most of the events on my calendar are appointments and meetings, the built-in weather feature is still helpful when planning events for the week. For example, if I want to plan a pool day with friends, I can quickly check the calendar to see which day has the best weather.
This removes the need to constantly switch between your weather app and calendar app just to compare schedules and forecasts. It may seem like a small feature, but it has genuinely made planning with friends and family more convenient.
The trash bin is a lifesaver
Better to have a trash bin than not
It’s always good to have a safety net when managing important information. That way, if you accidentally delete something, you can recover it.
That’s one reason I rely on Samsung Calendar’s trash bin feature. If I accidentally remove an event, I can simply move it to the trash and restore it.
Surprisingly, Samsung Calendar includes this feature on mobile, while Google Calendar does not. Google Calendar does offer a trash bin on desktop, but on mobile, the feature is nowhere to be found.
For me, this is a very useful feature. As my calendar fills up with events, appointments, and reminders, it becomes much easier to accidentally delete the wrong entry.
Due to that, having a trash bin saves me from having to recreate an event from memory and worry about whether I remembered all the details correctly. It may not seem like a feature you’ll use often, but when you need it, you’ll be glad it’s there.
However, do remember that, like most trash systems, deleted items don’t stay there forever. Samsung Calendar gives you 30 days to restore anything before it’s permanently deleted.
Google Calendar is still good, too
Now, this isn’t to say Google Calendar is a bad calendar app. One feature I miss is the ability to easily view and edit my calendar on my laptop, rather than relying mainly on my phone.
While I can still view Samsung Calendar events by syncing them with another calendar service, I’d prefer being able to use the same app experience across both mobile and desktop.
That said, Samsung Calendar better fits what I personally want from a calendar app and how I organize my schedule. It doesn’t just tell me what’s coming next—it helps me see the bigger picture when planning future events.
