You may use an app on your home PC or Mac, like Tomboy or Notational Velocity, to take text notes or virtual "scrapbooks" of pictures. But you might not have known that many notetaking programs have companion apps for your Android smartphone, that let you view and even create and edit new notes on the go. Some of these even let you add pictures you take on your phone to your scrapbooks, or check off items on your shopping list (for instance).
Here's a look at some of the newest and most popular Android notetaking apps:
Microsoft Office OneNote is a Windows PC app that costs more than $50. You don't need to own it to use OneNote for Android, though, or even to view and edit your smartphone's notes on your PC; there's a free web-based version of OneNote that even Mac and Linux PC owners can use.
OneNote has a simple interface that lets you take pictures and write notes with complex formatting. The free version lets you have up to 500 notes on your phone, with no ads. There is no subscription version; a $5 in-app purchase will unlock the full and unlimited version of OneNote.
While OneNote is only on the web and on Windows PCs (for an additional price), besides being on Android, Evernote is pretty much everywhere. There are Evernote apps for Macs, the iPad, BlackBerry smartphones, and even the Barnes and Noble Nook. This makes it easier to access and edit your notes from those devices, if you have them. The free Android app has no ads, although the desktop version has them unless you subscribe (which also grants more features).
Evernote has an extremely comprehensive set of options. You can copy-and-paste chunks of web pages into it and have them formatted correctly, and there are extensions for Chrome and Firefox that help you do this. There's also another app called Skitch that works with Evernote (and is also available on the Nook), which lets you edit your photos and other pictures before sending them to Evernote.
SimpleNote is an extremely straightforward web app that lets you take pure text notes, and search through them quickly. There isn't an official SimpleNote client for Android, but there are a large number of apps that are designed to work with SimpleNote, including several for Android like FlickNote and Notational Acceleration.
TomDroid is an Android app that syncs your notes from the Tomboy PC or Mac app, using the free Ubuntu One service. You can also view your notes online right now, although this feature will be removed from Ubuntu One on February 28.
This app is mostly useful to fans of Tomboy's lightweight approach to notetaking on the desktop, and does not allow you to edit your notes.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.




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