Rating: 
Review Conditions
LocaNote Lite from Tamoggemon Software was installed in a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an s60 5th edition mobile device running Symbian version OS 9.4.
Installation
Installation is using the Nokia Application Installer. LocaNote Lite is also available in the Ovi store.
First View
If you want to quickly scribble a note on your mobile with a few taps, LocaNote is the app for you. More below.
Main Review
LocaNote Lite is a simple note taking application for your S60 touch devices. The whole design has been centered around making it absolutely easy for the user to start taking notes with a single tap.
Most actions can be accomplished with a single tap. When the application is opened up for the first time, you are asked to just tap, to create a new note. Later on, you just press “New” to create a note. Multiple menu structures with myriad options are deliberately avoided to make the note taking on LocaNote efficient.
All the usual features like the pencil, drawing straight lines, ellipses, squares and a paint bucket are available. The pencil has 3 levels of thickness. LocaNote does not have an eraser. When you just need to make a quickly note, you don’t have time to make the corrections. Just clear the screen and start over. The menu can be moved around the screen for convenience.
A single tap on the green check button on the lower right corner saves the file.
A small palette of colors is available for the pencil. The background cannot be changed.
The icon on the lower left corner brings up the help file. You actually don’t need any help to figure out your way around LocaNote.
A long-press on a note will let you do 3 operations, delete a note, share a note or print a note. Sharing and printing notes are features in LocaNote Plus.
The filter function lets you search for notes. Obviously you would have created many tens of notes over time and you’d want to look for notes created on or edited on specific dates or last edited on before/after certain dates and time.
Any note’s file name contains the date and time it was created. For e.g. a file created on 20th Aug, 10.17 AM has the file name 20082009-101708.
I found the filter function a little too complicated. For e.g. I would like to see notes created before Aug 2009 or created after July 2009. I cannot set these filters. And filters that check for notes created after a particular hour and before a particular hour is not really needed.
Finally, when I want to pick a note created on a particular date, I should be taken to the calendar to specify the date. Its cumbersome to type the date.
LocaNote Lite has 2 advanced versions as mentioned on the website, LocaNote Plus and LocaNote Pro. There is little description about the advanced versions on the website but the application’s help talks about the features on LocaNote Plus. In addition to sharing and printing notes, LocaNote also lets you Map your notes. I guess that means you could geo-tag the notes and lets your friends and colleagues know where you created then when it is shared.
Handling
With a keen focus on quick and easy note taking, LocaNote is very easy to use. I would like to find out if the advanced features of LocaNote Plus and LocaNote Pro also align well to this focus.
Weaknesses
I’d like notes I create to be attachable to the calendar, alarms and the address book. There is no note application on S60 that does this but it would be great to have one, touch-enabled too.
Having a palette with shapes and colors makes LocaNote look like a paint application.
The filter could have been implemented in a simpler fashion. I really want to see the calendar open up with I need to select dates. I don’t want to enter dates.
A cool use case would be for someone to jot down a name and number and this getting added to the address book. I guess that will make the application expensive.
Conclusion
LocaNote is easy to use. I am keenly looking forward to the LocaNote Plus and LocaNote Pro versions. LocaNote versions are currently NOT available for download on the website. They will soon be available at the Ovi store. LocaNote Lite can be downloaded from the Ovi Store for 3 Euros.
Its good stuff and I’ll give it 4 of 5.
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