Following last week’s announcement of a redesigned Mac client (more details here), which was released yesterday as public beta, Evernote has today announced a major update “coming very soon” for the iOS version of the app.
Dubbed like the Mac counterpart “Evernote 5”, the new Evernote for iOS presents a brand new interface to browse notes, notebooks, and tags on the iPhone and iPad. Using a “stacked” interface for sections, Evernote has implemented a new navigation to switch views with just two taps; on the iPad’s larger screen, the team also managed to fit in a “recent notes” scrollable menu at the top, which should allow users to quickly switch between notes from different notebooks or tags.
The update seems to borrow heavily from the new Mac app. There’s an Atlas view to browse notes by location, redesigned Tags and Notebooks views, Cards, Filters, and Sorting options reminiscent of what we saw in Evernote 5 beta for Mac. The iOS app places great emphasis on three shortcuts at the top to create a new note or photo note, the latter being a feature that leverages the iPhone’s camera to snap photos and automatically save them as new notes. It’s unclear whether users will also be able to create shortcuts for notes and notebooks on iOS – shortcuts are a new major feature of Evernote 5 for Mac that, personally, I’d love to see on iOS.
We’ve learned a lot over the years about how people use Evernote on mobile devices. It’s all about speed. Whether you’re creating a note or browsing to one, everything needs to happen fast. Also, you want the app to easily support your preferred organization scheme. If you’re a tagger, then tags must be front-and-center. If you put everything into notebooks, then those need to be quickly accessible.
As an Evernote user, I’m looking forward to trying the new Evernote app for iOS. In the meantime, check out Evernote’s blog post here and official promo video below.
