Evernote revamped its application for Google Android smartphones, adding a new home screen and using Google Search, among other usability perks.
Evernote, which has 5 million users and banked $20 million from Sequoia Capital last month, lets users make notes out of text, a full Web page or Web page excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten “ink” note.
These “notes” support file attachments where necessary and then are sorted, tagged, annotated, edited, given comments and searched.
Like its predecessor, Evernote 2.0 for Android lets users take notes, snap photos, record audio and manage their Evernote data. However, the new version cleans up a lot of the UI bumps from the original app.
For example, the search magnifying glass sits atop the app on the screen, and users can now create new searches, view previous ones, or access saved searches and search for things near their location.
Evernote users running Android OS 2.1 or later will be leveraging Google’s latest Search widget to search right from their phone’s home screen.
Users viewing notes will now see a tab at the bottom of the screen. When they tap this, the app will open to show all the notes in a current search.
Users will swipe from left to right through the thumbnails to switch between notes, which may be viewed by tapping the note title. People may group notes by notebook, location or month.
Evernote Engineer Philip Constantinou said he and his team leveraged shortcuts for searches and notes in the Android OS for Evernote 2.0.
“This is perfect if you want to jump quickly to your to-do list or common searches straight from the home screen,” Constantinou said in a blog post, noting that users can create a shortcut by tapping into the menu when viewing a note or search, then tap the “shortcut” option. The shortcut will appear on the homescreen of the device.
Other tools include the ability to record audio as users type, download attachments when viewing notes, and send content from other apps into Evernote using the sharing option.
Evernote 2.0 is available now as a free ad-supported app from the Android Market. The company also offers a paid app that costs $5 per month or $45 per year. Evernote for Android 2.0 users may upgrade to the premium version from application settings.
Evernote 2.0 for Android users with premium accounts will be able to specify the notebooks they want saved for offline viewing.
The company will download all the notes including attached images and files, and save them all onto the phone’s SD card.