QuickAdvice: notes + u Has Good Concept, But Falls Short
notes + u ($2.99) by M2D2 is a note taking app for your iPhone that lets you compose notes made of audio recordings, photos, and text.
If you've ever found yourself with only your iPhone with you and you need to make a note of something, then notes + u has what you would probably need, though it has it's own critical flaws.
On the first launch of notes + u, the first thing you'll see is a screen that will normally list your notes. There's a + button in the bottom right corner that will allow you to create a new note.
When creating a new note, you'll get prompted to enter a title and whether or not you want full length audio recording. If you choose to disable this, you can add shorter audio "snippets" to your note instead of having it record for the entire length of your note taking.
If you choose to have full length audio recording, the recording will start immediately after you tap "Create." At this time, while the app is recording, you can add either text or a photo to your note by hitting that + button in the corner again. You can also pause the recording anytime by tapping on that arrow in the title bar, and resume recording anytime.
It seems that notes + u only supports plain text currently - there is no support for bold, italics, underline, bullets, and all the other fancy formatting stuff. If you were looking for these things, then it's best to move on to another app that will give you these functions. If this doesn't bother you, then keep reading.
When adding a visual add-on to your note, the app only supports images with your note, no videos are allowed. You can pull an image from your Photo Library, Camera Roll (even though this is essentially the same as Photo Library, this also crashed the app for me), or Take Photo from the app itself. Those that were hoping to attach videos will be disappointed, but otherwise, the function works decently. Images will be cropped into a square though, without an option to just include the full size image. Those that don't like square format images will be let down.
As you add text and images to your note, these will all be separate markers in your note if you do full length audio recording. You can also add bookmarks to the audio, which is great for helping you keep track of important parts of the audio.
When you are done with your note, you'll tap on the icon that resembles a floppy disk (remember those?). After that, you'll be taken back to the main note listing, where you will see your newly created note. It will show you the date it was created, name of the note, how many markers (individual text, image, and bookmark elements) are in it, and how long the recording was for that note.
If you select this note, you can play back the audio and swipe on individual elements to trash, edit, or jump to that point in the audio.
Remember earlier how I talked about the difference between the full length audio recordings and the "snippets?" If you choose to go the snippet route, the note does not start recording immediately as you create the note, but rather, you can add audio elements just as you would with text and images. When these notes are saved, they do not display a "total length" in the note listing screen, but they are counted as "markers," just like the text and images.
As I was testing the app, sometimes I found the responsiveness of notes + u to be laggy and choppy. Sometimes I would tap on something and there would be no response. It sometimes took a few taps to finally be able to get what I want.
There are no additional settings for notes + u, even in the main device Settings. This is surprising, because I'm used to note apps that give me a bit more customization or options to make the experience better. There is a lack of Search, which makes it difficult to find the note that you are looking for if you have accumulated a good collection of notes.
I'm also a bit baffled that there is no sync option to go along with this - I find this to be absolutely crucial in any note-taking app. Even if it's just Dropbox support, there should be *something* to have a backup of all your notes because let's face it, iTunes backups aren't exactly the best way to go about things.
Notes + u provides a simple interface, but the way to create notes is not exactly intuitive (you need to create multiple elements to go along with the audio, etc). If it would track your text in a single element completely (take for example, a Mac OS X program called Pear Note), then it would be a bit more useful. The lack of any backup solution hurts it as well.
For $3, there are better note-taking options out there that provide a more complete package. Simplenote (for plain text), Evernote (for multimedia elements), and Awesome Note (rich experience and backup options) are just some examples.
