A calendar is a huge selling point for any smart phone and the iPhone is no exception. The iPhone’s calendar is an integral to the phone and is used by casual and business users alike. It is not, however, anywhere near perfect. Here are five simple suggestions that Apple could incorporate to make the phone’s Calendar app truly shine.

1. Unlock Screen
   When you wake up your phone and it shows the “Slide to Unlock” screen, there is an alarming lack of information. Date, Time, Battery Life, and a background picture are nice, but there is generally just unused space that could be better put to use by displaying a upcoming calendar events.
2. Icon
   It’s nice that the icon changes daily to display the day, but that’s kinda gimmicky. What would really give the it a boost is if that little red number that appears in the upper right-hand corner of other applications (Showing the number of unread mail, messages, missed calls, etc) also showed up in the corner of the Calendar app to indicate the number of events left that day.
3. Alternate Alerts
   That soft beeping noise the phone makes is completely useless. I’ve had the phone in my pocket in a not-that-loud room and not heard it. Simply allowing custom alerts would be a huge improvement. Doubly so if you can set alerts on an event-by-event basis.
4. Sleep Timer
   It beeps, then it’s done reminding you. How about a sleep timer for those of us that can be a bit forgetful. This goes right along with the need for customizable alerts and should work just like the sleep timer in the Clock app does, requiring you to physically unlock the phone to stop it from repeating the alert.
5. Landscape Mode
   Virtually every other built-in app can be viewed in landscape with the larger, easier to type keyboard. I simply cannot comprehend why this didn’t make it’s way over to the Calendar app as well.

Do you have other suggestions for improvements you’d like to see in the iPhone’s calendar app? Please leave a comment and share it with us.