Advertised as "your external brain", Evernote lets you remember anything that you want using your iPhone. You can jot down stuff that you need to buy for home, save interesting pictures when you're out with friends, take a snapshot of a product that you'll purchase later or capture an interesting quote from a conversation.
You name it and Evernote is there to organize that information for you and more importantly the information is easily accessible and searchable at any time.
Evernote on the iPhone helps you memorize anything you want by adding notes in the various form: text note, snapshot/photo note and voice note. The snapshot and voice note are especially handy when you do not want to type lengthy text using iPhone's virtual keyboard. For every note you save, it is automatically upload to your Evernote server via WiFi or 3G/EDGE. So, you can refer them back whenever you need.
The interface of Evernote is simple and intuitive. To get started, it requires you to first register an account. The service is free and upgradable to a premium account with larger upload allowance.
To add a new note, you can just tap on the "New Note" button and select the type of note you'd like to add. For every note you save, you can add title, tags and detailed description to make it searchable. Also, you can organize the note into various notebooks that might have created previously. To browse the notes, you can tap on "Notes" button and it shows you all the notes from all your notebooks. You can also do a simple text search using the interface to locate your desired note.
One notable feature that I should highlight is Evernote can automatically recognize the text in your snapshots and make the text searchable which is an awesome feature. Evernote claim that they can recognize photos of anything from whiteboards to business cards to wine labels. I have tried out the image recognition with two photos: wine label and book cover. It worked for my book cover and as I typed "Bull" in the search bar, Evernote showed up that snapshot note with the "Bull" text. But for wine label, the text was not recognized.
Evernote for the iPhone is only part of the Evernote service. Evernote also offers a desktop version of Evernote client, available on both Windows and Mac. You can also access Evernote via your web browser. So, whenever you have something to jot down, Evernote is there to take note and save it for you, which can then be accessible from your computer as well as on your iPhone when you are on the move.
So far, the iPhone version of Evernote has worked pretty well for me. But there is one thing I'd like to see improvement: let me create new notebook on iPhone. Presently, there is no way to create a new notebook on iPhone. When you need to create a new notebook, you'll need to go back to desktop or web version and then sync it back to iPhone which is a pain.
This app definitely joins our list of must-have iPhone apps. The iPhone app is available for free and you can download it directly using this iTunes link.
So if the iPhone app is free how do they make money? They offer Evernote Premium which costs $5 per month or $45 per year which gives you additional storage space (500 MB vs 40 MB for the free account) and offers better and stronger security features and also offers priority image recognition for the images uploaded by you.
Evernote recently raised $4.5 million for development and marketing of its product and also won the Crunchies award for the Best Mobile Startup.
What do you think about Evernote's iPhone app? Does it help organize your life's information? Leave your comment below and let us know your thoughts.
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i love evernote.. it helps organize damn near everything… one BIG plus that u didn't mention is that evernote (if u want it to) will recognize notes based on your gps so if you're in the mall and u only have enough for one thing and you'll have to come back to get the other.. when u write the note in evernote it will pull up your notes u wrote at the mall.. i wish they would make it where u can grab a location and set notes for that place.. like next time I'm at the supermarket I have to buy eggs.. and be able to write that note at home and google map the address of the market and attach it.. maybe i should write that app … lol
Thanks for pointing it out, I forgot to mention of Evernote's location aware feature.
However, other than recording the location while adding a note, there is no additional functionality based on the information recorded other than viewing the location in maps. I am guessing they would add more functionality in future versions.
The feature you mentioned would be quite interesting, go ahead write an app and we will definitely write about it here at iPhone Hacks
I don't see what the big deal is with evernote. There are plenty of other apps for notes/photos/gps/etc. (I've used YouNote quite a bit myself) and the only difference seems to be that evernote wants to send my data across the internet to some server of theirs for processing, which may or may not be reachable depending on my connection at the time I want to read it back, all for the slim hope that while they're rummaging through my data they might be able to ocr some words out of the pictures I give them?
I really don't understand why evernote continues to get attention over any of it's competetors which do as much or sometimes even more than evernote. I've tried it, and it's not bad but I wasn't particularly impressed either. Why the fascination with evernote?
i've used this since the beginning. I love it the web clipping feature is great when tracking shipments and copying pictures. If you don't have it give it a try.
I heard that Evernote sends all notes and data to themselves and they're able to reproduce and store the information and use it at their own will. That's why I use Younote.
does the free version expire after 1 month? or is it free for ever?
EverNote is very unstable for me, not sure if it happens to others. I like Idea Organizer much better though it lacks one thing that I wish would be implemented soon – the ability to sync.
"let me create new notebook on iPhone."
I agree, it sucks not to be able to create notebooks on the fly while you are away from the computer.
To work around this issue, I created a notebook named "Inbox" and set it as the default notebook. I use that notebook for new notebook items on the iphone. That way, the next time I am on a computer I can easily create the notebook and move the items over. Setting it to the default lets me forward emails to my Evernote "Inbox" using the supplied email address and put them in the right notebook later.
It's simple, I can access my notes from anywhere that way, and there has never been a problem with connecting to their servers.
I clip a web page from my computer I can get it with my iPhone. I take a photo note with my iPhone, I can get it with my netbook.
It's so obvious. One app and it's accessible from anywhere I am.
Evernote has always been very reliable and always available for me.
Don't know why you're having problems.
I'm with you on the creating notebooks on the iPhone. Great app but that's a definite weakness I'd like to see them address.