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In the beginning, there was Notes, and it was… well, it was pretty awful, actually. No sync, no password protection, and mandatory Marker Felt. But then Apple created the App Store, and it was good. It’s been just over a year since the App Store opened, and plenty of notes apps have appeared, so we thought it was about time to round up some of the top suspects and see which one came out on top.

Before we dive into the assessments, a couple of notes: John Gruber has written a bit on this subject already. We did our best to ignore everything he said and come to our own conclusions, but in the interest of full disclosure, we did read both of those articles.

We excluded Evernote from this roundup for a couple of reasons: it does one too many things for a simple ‘notes’ app, and it doesn’t actually store most of your notes on the iPhone itself—except for manually chosen favorites, they’re all stored online—so if you don’t have internet access, you don’t have your notes. All the apps we included in this roundup keep a copy of your notes on the device itself, whether or not they also include a sync feature.

via Take Note: A roundup of ‘notes’ apps for the iPhone « Smoking Apples.

Next Monday sees the release of the latest mobile phone to run Google’s Android operating system. The Motorola Milestone is a significant launch and is already being touted as an “iPhone killer”, not least because it will be the first handset to run Android 2.0, the very latest version of the software.

Android – the brainchild of search giant Google and a consortium of handset makers and component manufacturers – is finally beginning to realise its huge potential, and so too are consumers.

via The Motorola Milestone: will Google Androids take over in 2010? – Telegraph.

Weve known for some time that China Mobile was planning to launch the KIRFy OPhone from Lenovo. Now, with word on the street that China Unicom has snagged the iPhone in that providers home turf, a report from DigiTimes is suggesting that China Mobile might be trying to undermine the competitions supposed June iPhone launch by dropping the OPhone a month earlier. That sounds sensible enough, but are people there so eager for iPhone theyd jump on the imitation rather than wait another month for the real thing? Well find out soon enough.

via China Mobile planning to subvert Unicoms iPhone launch with the OPhone?.

More often than not, you’ll see one-star reviews in which people are raving about the quality of an application. There are also people who give an application five stars, then go on to spend two paragraphs discussing how often it crashes and larger off-topic issues like international pricing and the handset’s lack of a copy-and-paste feature. You also get a lot of comments written in ALL CAPS, with lines of Emoji icons, colored stars, and superfluous exclamation marks.

In every sense, it’s like the Wild West: untamed and full of interesting characters.

To Apple’s credit, on Friday, the company (as promised) removed reviews from customers who had not purchased the application they were reviewing. This may cut down on spam and ill-conceived or written reviews, but it’s not a big step in improving how the review system works.

via Apple’s mobile-app review system needs overhaul | Webware – CNET.

Only about 20% of people who download a free application were using it the next day, a research firm found.

Most people stop using iPhone applications downloaded from Apples App Store after the first day, an analytics firm found.

Only about 20% of people who download a free application were using it the next day, Pinch Media found. Paid apps fared slightly better with nearly 30% of people still using the download.

Pinch Media, which provides iPhone developers with analytics on their applications, presented on Wednesday its findings on app use at the New York iPhone Developers Meetup. The findings, offered in a slide show on the companys Web site, were based on the monitoring of more than 30 million downloads.

In general, Pinch Medias analysis indicates that iPhone developers applications will have to be immediately compelling to hold a user for any length of time. After 90 days, the percentage of people still using downloads hovers around 1%.

Applications related to sports are best at retaining users over the short term, while games are best over the long term, Pinch Media found.

For most developers considering ad-supported applications, Pinch Media advised taking the paid route instead. “Unless theres something inherent about the app that screams free, sell it,” the firm said.

via Apple App Store Downloads Often Abandoned — IPhone — InformationWeek.