We launched Evernote for iPhone on the same day that Apple launched the iTunes App Store. Over the course of the two years, we’ve gained incredible insight into what makes an app great. What we learned is that our users want faster access, easier note creation, better browsing and more ways to find what they’re looking for. Put another way, getting stuff done should be a snap.

With that in mind, we went back to the drawing board and reconsidered every single aspect of Evernote for iPhone. We think you’re going to love the changes. With that, we give you Evernote 4, available in the iTunes App Store.

The new Home Screen and Snippet View

The first thing you’ll notice is that we have unified browsing and note creation in the application’s new home screen. Your notes list is now shown in Snippet View. This view maximizes the amount of information that is presented in a small amount of space. If a note is text only, then the app will show the title of the note and as much text as will fit into the snippet. If the note only contains an image, then we’ll take a slice out of the image and present it full width. If the note has a mix of text and other forms of content, then we’ll show you the title, some text and a thumbnail. This means that you’ll get more at a glance than ever, in many cases allowing you to skip opening the note entirely.

The new New Note screen

Gone are the big home screen tiles of old. They’ve been replaced with an ultra-functional New Note screen. When you tap the big plus, you’re presented with a split screen. The top half is your standard text entry area. The lower half lets you attach images and snapshots, record 90 minutes of audio, assign notebooks and tags and even set your location. You can now attach multiple items to a single note. So, if you’re sitting in a meeting or lecture, you can have notes, recorded audio and a whiteboard snapshot all in a single note.

To create a note on the audio recorder (one of my personal favorites): tap once to start recording, tap again to stop and attach the recorded audio to the note. Tapping a third time will start a new recording, which will become a second attachment.

Removing attachments
To remove an attachment, tap on the paperclip icon. This will show you the attachment screen. To remove, tap edit and tap the red circle. You can also swipe across the item.

Selecting multiple camera roll images at once
When adding images from your Camera roll, you can choose to attach multiple images to a single note or create a note per image. To select multiple notes, tap on the arrow in the lower left corner of the Camera Roll note screen. If you decide to make multiple notes, the title, notebook and tag settings associated with the note you are creating will be automatically be applied to all of the new image notes.

Assigning notebook, tags and location
The top row of buttons lets you create and assign a notebook and tag your note. The location button is a convenient way to double-check your current location or modify (or even delete) the note’s location information.

Browsing by notebook and tag

This is a biggie. Many users have asked for a way to view a single notebook at a time. Now, you can. Both notebooks and tags are options along the lower tab bar. Select the notebook or tag you wish to view and that’s all you’ll see.

Resource views

Have you ever had that tip-of-the-tongue feeling? You’re trying to remember something and you almost have it, but not quite. The new Resource Views will cure that. When you have your list open, tap on the 2×2 box icon in the top right corner. All of the Resource Views relate to the current note list, so if you’re filtering by a specific notebook, then only those notes will show up.

• Image view: This view displays all the images from all the notes. Tap on an image and the note will open.
• Attachment view: This view displays a list of all the attached items (excluding images) contained in the notes
• Map view: This view drops pins on a map for all notes with geo-location information. Tap the compass icon to find notes near your current location.

Search

Search now gets its own screen. That’s because all of your saved searches appear below the search bar. You can either create a new search or tap on a saved search using a desktop version of Evernote.

A reminder about offline notes and notebooks

As always, Evernote for iPhone supports offline notes and notebooks. If you’re a Free subscriber, any note that you create, view or favorite on the iPhone will be available offline (access Favorites from the Notebook menu). Evernote Premium subscribers can select entire notebooks to be viewable offline. This option is available from Settings. You can also upgrade to Evernote Premium right from the app, if you like.

Evernote for iPad

Evernote for iPad got numerous behind-the-scenes improvements as part of this update. You can expect many of the ideas and concepts from this iPhone redesign to make their way into upcoming versions of Evernote for iPad. Stay tuned.

What’s next?

We have spent the last several months retooling Evernote for iPhone. This version has a ton of new stuff, but we couldn’t get everything we wanted into this release without making you wait even longer. Upcoming releases will include more of your requested features, including shared notebooks, Notebook Stacks, and in-app editing of notes with styled text and multimedia. Stay tuned! In the meantime, we want to hear what you think. Tell us in the comments.