Qlate

Stone -

Happy Saturday! It's a beautiful cool sunny morning out here West of Toronto as I sit out on my front porch reflecting on the week, listening to Guardians of the Galaxy - Awesome Mix, and writing up this 45th weekly app review. Thanks to each of you who take the time to read these reviews and a special thanks to those who have reached out and suggested apps or provided feedback.

Qlate is a very interesting app that I heard about it via the article 5 Android apps you shouldn't miss this week - Android Apps Weekly. As the article suggests, it's primarily a calculator app with the ability to take notes. You can disable the calculator functions so that it's more of a note app.

Qlate doesn't have a ton of features but it's fast, has a cool UI, and you can export to PDF. It would be useful if you're a student doing research, an employee tracking expenses, a small business person creating quotes, or someone trying to track calories.

I gave it a low score since overall it's quite basic but I'm very happy to have spent the $3.39 and I'm looking forward to seeing updates to this app ongoing!

Screenshots

Meta

Ugly

  • Primarily a calculator
  • Took me forever to figure out how to color a note after I had done it once!
  • Note titles have odd titles with numbers that didn't make sense to me e.g. "New Sheet 763"
  • No image attachments
  • No audio attachments
  • The toolbar is only shown when viewing the list of ALL notes, not in PINNED or RECENT tabs

Bad

  • When set to notes mode, the export still includes all the lines and total amount as if it was a sheet. With a few clicks these can be hidden but it would be cool if those options were automagically disabled
  • When set to notes mode, edit note still shows the Total at the bottom but that can be hidden via a menu option
  • It would be cool to be able to set "sheet" or "note" mode on a per note basis as well as the overall setting
  • No hyperlinks
  • No Markdown support
  • No (real) numbered lists
  • No check-boxes
  • No folders or tagging so I wonder how it will work with hundreds of notes

Good

  • No account required, works offline
  • Cost is only $3.39 CAD
  • Good help files on Github
  • Sort by created date, modified date, viewed date
  • Intro tutorial
  • Interesting custom calculator keyboard for math functions (which can be disabled)
  • New notes are called "Sheets" which kind of works for math stuff and notes (sheets of paper-ish)
  • Backup and restore
  • Undo and redo
  • Nice font
  • 5 font sizes
  • Pin a note
  • Export a note directly from the note list
  • Trash for deleted notes
  • Math functions if you need them

Great

  • You can have # comments which get grayed out and can be excluded from export. that's a neat idea for notes
  • Nice colors on cards
  • Set default page to PINNED, RECENT, or ALL notes

Awesome

  • Plain and simple UI
  • Card view is so simple that it's refreshing
  • Color coded cards
  • Sort by color
  • Export to PDF (limited number of times until you purchase)
  • Description of note which can be included in or excluded from the export