Evernote Feedback - reliability and usability issues

[San D 0]

Hi,

 

First of all, I was not really sure where to put this post up, as my experience involves multiple platforms and multiple types of usage for Evernote. If the moderators feel that this post belongs to some other section, then please feel free to move it to an appropriate section.

 

Secondly, I'm an Evernote Basic user since late 2012, and have upgraded to Premium this year. I have used Evernote in Android and Windows for basic note taking, writing stories, as a document repository, and some PIM. I really like the concept behind Evernote, and how good it is at executing some of those. It is indeed one of the most complete and reliable tools of its kind.

 

However, lately I have been noticing that the usability and reliability of Evernote has taken a serious hit on multiple fronts.

 

1. As a writing app - editor issues on my Moto G 2nd generation (running Android 6.0)

Since the introduction of the new editing interface (around 7.9.3 - 7.9.4), longer notes (15 KB or more, plaintext) are a pain to edit on my phone. I have updated the app to the latest version (7.9.6), and the issue still persists. The editor is barely responsive and taps and swipes get registered after a noticeable lag. It is not an issue with the phone, as other apps like MS Word work as those should. Also, as the note size increases, the performance degrades proportionately. I have raised a ticket with the support team regarding this, without a resolution. I won't say the support team is not responsive, they do try to help, but they haven't been able to replicate the issue, let alone finding the root cause. After attempts at replicating the issue for a month or more, the issue is currently pending with the development team for the last 20+ days, without a response. My gut feeling is that the editor was not optimized for older phones before the rollout.

 

2. All types of usage affected by syncing issues on every platform

I have difficulty coming to terms with the fact that none of the Evernote installations can be trusted to sync properly. Some days back, one of the notebooks appeared to contain 2 notes on my phone, but on opening, only one was visible (and all other clients and web version showed one). On one of my laptops, one notebook seemed to contain 8 notes, whereas from all other clients 15 notes were visible. And to fix these issues, I had to delete the database from the Windows client and rebuild the Evernote database. Similarly for the phone. The major problem is, you never know when your database is corrupted, unless you keep on checking the note counts and the notes on every client. And to top this off, the web version shows that my trash contains 2 notes (other clients show trash is empty) - neither has a name and no content is visible. I'm wary to raise a support ticket, as again they won't be able to replicate this.

 

Make no mistake, Evernote is still a great product, but it needs to get the basics right (those were right before, which is all the more disheartening). I'm not even demanding for features I'd love to see, but give us a working note taking/writing/filing tool which syncs well with the cloud. Please.

 

 

Regards,

Sandipan

[San D 0]

Unfortunately, no one even bothers to respond to these issues. :-|

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2016-10-29 at 1:31 AM, San D said:

Make no mistake, Evernote is still a great product, but it needs to get the basics right (those were right before, which is all the more disheartening). I'm not even demanding for features I'd love to see, but give us a working note taking/writing/filing tool which syncs well with the cloud.

I find the Evernote editor works well for assembling notes; some text and attachments
I keep my notes short and basic text
For a writing tool, I use dedicated apps like word processors

Generally, I haven't experienced problems with syncing.
Any issues I encountered were quickly resolved

>>I'm wary to raise a support ticket, as again they won't be able to replicate this.

I'd continue to open support tickets.  This is a user forum, but the support ticket is the route to notify Evernote of an issue

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, San D said:

Unfortunately, no one even bothers to respond to these issues. :-|

Sometimes they respond, and sometimes they don't. It's not a guarantee, though everything is read by Evernote employees.

One thing: if you have platform-specific comments or feature requests (like your Android problem), it's probably best to post them separately in the appropriate subforum.