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Android App Smackdown - Catch vs Evernote

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:13:36 -0800

So, I just got the new HTC Evo and it does not come with a notepad app. This is such basic functionality that I immediately broke out into tears. After the uncontrollable sobs subsided and I dried my tears I figured I'd do something about it. So, I asked friends for suggestions and did a little research and discovered Catch (https://catch.com/) and Evernote (http://www.evernote.com/). The short story: I'm going with Catch.

The Long Story

So, I've been using Catch and Evernote for a couple of weeks now. I am using them to keep a ToDo list, keeping lists of restaurants, movies, books to check out, and also keeping a list of possible furniture choices for my new apartment. In the end, Catch won by a couple technicalities and a nicer looking interface, even though I think Evernote put up a solid fight and has a couple cool features that Catch can't match.

Feature vs. Feature

Both Catch and Evernote let you create notes on any device - laptop, phone, desktop, etc. - and automatically synchronizes them. I really like the way tags work in Catch. You simply type in a hashtag and the note is tagged. It's stupid simple. Evernote forces you to create tags and then manually add them to the note you want to tag. Even though Evernote doesn't support hashtags, I noticed that you can add hashtags to Evernote notes and then search for the hashtag. It won't automatically show up as a tag, but hey, it works. In fact, Evernote search is one of their key features.

Evernote searching works really well. Evernote has an OCR search functionality and Catch has nothing like it. You can take a picture of something and later you can search by text in the picture. For example, I just searched for "table" and found all the pictures I took of table price tags.Nifty! However, if you take pictures, you better have some bandwidth to support all that uploading.

Evernote just barely beat out Catch on monthly upload bandwidth with Evernote weighing in at 60 MB / month and Catch coming in at 50 MB / month. It's not much of a difference, but it might let you grab a few more pictures. Note, this is for the free version, as I am too cheap to pay for the premium accounts.

I also considered a few more features including notebooks, security, voice notes and email notes. Evernote allows multiple notebooks if you like to keep your notes compartmentalized. This is useless to me though as I prefer to use tags and search functionality. This is exactly how Catch works with all of your notes in one place. As for security, Catch emphasizes that your notes are always transferred over a secure HTTPS connection regardless of whether you are using the app or the website. I noticed that the Evernote website uses HTTPS, however, I'm not sure if they are using an HTTPS connection between the app and the back end. (Do you know? Please share your wisdom in the comments.) Catch supports voice notes if you like to take those "note to self" recordings. I didn't notice any capability for voice notes in Evernote. Another cool feature for Evernote was that it allows you to send an email to a unique Evernote email address to automatically create a note. Unfortunately, attachments are not automatically added to the note, so the picture of my mom's Chicken Cordon Bleu recipe was never to be seen again. Catch does not support this feature.

And the Winner Is...

As I mentioned, in the end, it came down to a couple technicalities. Number one - my office has blacklisted the Evernote website as I'm sure they are worried about employees accidentally leaking client data all over the interwebs. (It's probably only a matter of time before they blacklist Catch as well.) Number two - Evernote currently has a bug on the Evo where pictures are displayed zoomed in really close and cannot be zoomed out to any reasonable level. It made the ability to take picture notes completely worthless on my phone. In the end, this bug and the simple tagging of Catch made me go with Catch. Most of my iPhone wielding buddies all rave about Evernote, but until they fix that bug, I won't use it. In the end it was a very close call and I will likely check back in 6 months to a year to see how the two products are doing. Also, I just found Springpad (http://springpadit.com/home/) and I am definitely intrigued. If I end up checking it out, I'll write another review. I hope this was helpful and please feel free to share your constructive criticism in the comments!

Too Much Information

Android App Smackdown - Catch vs Evernote

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