Notas Notepad

A basic app from Seoul, Korea that I initially reviewed 7 months ago. It was not very good and then I found a few apps that looked exactly the same as this one just different colors. It appears that this is one of up to seventeen cloned note taking apps by Notas Notepad.

I email'd the Developer and he was quite responsive. He sent this note back:

My note apps have different design concepts and similar functions.

Thank you for your evaluation.

According to Play Store there are over 8.9 million combined installs of these apps which shows his scheme works. The apps have ratings ranging from 3.1 to 5.0 with an average rating of 4.5*. This shows just how useless app store ratings are and how poorly Google curates their app store.

I looked at the meta data on each of the apps in the store and based on the user comments, the earliest incarnation was Fnote app with 100K+ installs which had its first comment in Apr 2017 and was last updated in Sep 2020 described as:

FNote means folder notes.
FNote is notepad, notes app.

The first clone appears to be this one, Notepad which had its first comment in Sep 2018 and was last updated in Dec 2021 described as:

Notepad is fast notes app. It's easy & simple note app.
Write your notes quickly.

Meta

• Score: 4/10
• Version: 2.3.9
• Developer: Lee Sang-Shin
• Store rating: 4.5*
• email: pravida19@naver.com
• Web: notasnotepad.blogspot.com (no information)
• Download: Play Store
• Location: Seoul, Korea

Ugly

• Appears to be a clone of other apps: Fnote, FolderNote, YellowNote, WhiteNote, ClearNote, FastNote, BlueNote, PastelNote, GradientNote, BlackNote, BasicNote, VerticalNote, SimpleNote, NiceNote, StickyNote, GridNote
• No Web site
• No information on the Developer

Bad

• No bullets
• No formatting
• No inline checklists or bullets
• No attaching images
• No audio recording
• No sorting of notes
• No undo / redo
• If I double click to edit, the big button at the bottom says "Edit" should say "Save"
• Doesn't go into edit mode when I select a note

Good

• Share a note or checklist
• Dark mode
• Can increase font size easily with a button: 6 font sizes
• Search in notes
• Password protect a note
• Bookmark a note
• Checklists are separate
• Can share checklists
• Search across notes
• Backup or restore (proprietary format)
• Categories of notes
• $3.94 to remove ads

Great

• Nothing

Awesome

• Nothing