Three mobile phones, three operating systems and an Apple iPad. None can quickly turn an emailed meeting request into a calendar entry shared across all my devices.

A colleague sent an email meeting invitation. I received it on the Nokia Lumia 800. The phone uses Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5 operating system.

The message opened in mail. I could read the meeting request, but there was no way to move it to the phone’s calendar. When opened the attachment, the phone told me there “is no associated application”.

My first reaction was to view this as a Windows Phone problem. It turns out, this is a smartphone problem.

The email app on the HTC One X phone using Android version 4.0 couldn’t open the attachment, nor could the one on my older HTC Sensation. Viewing the email in Gmail using the browser on either phone doesn’t make any difference.

My iPad uses the same software as an iPhone, so I’m guessing here, possibly incorrectly, that the experience would be the same. The iPad recognises invite.ics is a calendar invitation and even opens the iOS calendar app. However, if I choose to accept the invitation, I get a message saying my response to the invitation cannot be sent.

I had to wait until I made it to my desktop Windows PC, to open the file and send the invitation to Google Calendar. Interestingly, it synced the details back to the Windows Phone and Android calendars without a hitch.