[Oluwadare Oyadiji]

I have been looking at some budget Nokia phones and was wondering whether you could have gmail and google calendar on them? Do you get the same amount of apps as you do on Google play store and ios store?

[hopmedic]

First question, yes. Absolutely. I don't use google's services, so I don't speak from experience, but from reading others' posts. One post I read today in response to an article on the web said it was "seemless."

Second question: How many apps from Play or App Store do you use?

Are there as many apps? No. Something like 1.3 million in Play vs. 300,000 in Windows Phone Store. But I don't have all 300,000 apps for Windows Phone on my phone, so I surely wouldn't use all 1.3 million from the Play store if I was on Android. Figure out what you need, and look in the store to see if it is there.

[Ken Rose1]

I'm using a Nokia Lumia 1520 and the installed calendar app. I can get it to download the information from my Google calendar with no problem. However, the Google calendar will not recognize new events I enter on my phone. I understand (and I may be wrong) this is due to a deliberate blocking of this ability by Google. I have found no way to overcome it.
GMail works fine on the phone.

[Hypnopottamus]

As far as email goes, you can absolutely have that. The native calendar app gives you limited calendar access. However, there are numerous 3rd party calendar apps that you can pretty much do everything you need as far as google calendar is concerned. I use True Calendar 8, where it lets you sign in directly to Google for calendar access. I use this as my primary calendar. I can see all my Exchange calendars, my outlook calendars, my Google calendars, and even my Facebook calendar. So yes, you can pretty much be fine with having Gmail/Google calendar as your main service on a Windows Phone if you choose to do so.

[WDavis4692]

I'm using a Nokia Lumia 1520 and the installed calendar app. I can get it to download the information from my Google calendar with no problem. However, the Google calendar will not recognize new events I enter on my phone. I understand (and I may be wrong) this is due to a deliberate blocking of this ability by Google. I have found no way to overcome it.
GMail works fine on the phone.

Another possible workaround without using a 3rd party calendar could be to set up an outlook calendar which automatically syncs with the google calendar. Make the outlook calendar your 'phone default'. Any events added to it will sync with google, and vice-versa.

I tried to log onto google calendar and check this, but it's giving me a redirect loop. Typical google nonsense.

[aikidaves]

I'm puzzled by people saying they can't add new events to their Google calendars from the native calendar app. I added one a couple of days ago for next Saturday, and I just did a test and it added to the Google calendar fine. Either I'm missing something, or it can be made to work (not that I did anything special to do it, just specified which calendar to add it to).

[fabiomarp]

Sure, you can. Try add new event, then push soft button [more detais]. More options will open down. Scroll 'til you find 'Calendar' - the box below has all the possible Calendar accounts available, mine has Microsoft and Google. You can try this, I've done it many times.