APP Review: 3banana

There’s no shortage of note taking apps for the Android platform but no single app seems to meet every need. 3banana Notes by Snaptic, the same makers of the basic but solid AK Notepad, recently became featured on the Marketplace so I decided to check it out.

Let me quickly run down some of the stand out features of this app:

Online note sync
Embed images from camera (one image per note)
Barcode scanner (dumps numeric barcode number to the note)
Inline tagging (This is rather cool, just write a #tag and allÂ identicalÂ tagged notes appear in the list of labels.
Ability to place a note on the home screen.
Google accountÂ integrationÂ and browser based note creation and editing
HTML tags (allows youtube embeds or multiple image links)

The rather glaringÂ omissionÂ here is the lack of any audio recordingÂ functionality. For a rather fully featured note app, I had myself convinced that the option was there and I was somehow missing it.

That one issue aside, 3banana has a lot going for it, online sync is always a for must when it comes to taking Â notes, mostly because I’m always wiping my phone for a fresh ROM, being able to view these notes back at yourÂ computerÂ for easier editing and sharing after making quick notes on my phoneÂ duringÂ a meeting also turned out to be much more useful than I expected and is not a feature I’d like to be without.

The biggest pair of features that any note taking app really need to have are speed and reliability. Fortunately the interface of 3banana is very user friendly and by adding a note to your home screen you can be into and editing a note in just a couple of seconds. As for reliability, well that also seems to be dead on and very stable.

Unlike theÂ behemothÂ app “Evernote” that has about every feature you could think of but is ratherÂ cumbersome, 3banana keeps it rather simple, but also very user friendly and fast. This isÂ definitelyÂ my new note app of choice. 3banana is free in the Android Market.