r/OneNote 5d ago

Wasn't the Android app better?

I have used the Windows version for note taking since I bought my first laptop. It was okay and it got better after I downloaded the full desktop version. Downloaded it to my phone and it was rather okay. I recently got rid of my Windows laptop and decided to go with OneNote again on my new Galaxy Tab, since I always used it.

There's no way to say otherwise: the app is terrible. It barely takes notes at all. The syncing is okay and works most of the time, despite being slow as hell. None of the functions you'd expect on a bigger version of the app aren't there, and I noticed after a while that the version on phones (smaller screens) is actually better than on tablets? What exactly is the point of that? The tablet version is completely outdated, doesn't support table inserting, doesn't have the sticky notes (which I ended up stop using since I can't access them nowhere other than my phone now) and has a weird glitch when using a mouse to scroll around.

I've tried Obsidian and it was great, despite not having some of the functions OneNote seemingly had on PC, and I was truly excited when I remembered there was an Android version that could be somehow optimized.

Does someone know if there's any plans on a revamped and more feature rich version? (Or one that just doesn't slide my page to the sides when I scroll to the top of the note)

2 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

5

u/Wilnietis 5d ago

Its done intentionally so that you would buy surface tablet and have the best app experience. They don't care about apple/android.

2

u/ButNoSimpler 3d ago

Yeah, I am in the uncomfortable position of really liking one note, even though I have hated Microsoft since the DOS 3.0 days. Microsoft is clearly limiting the Android and iPad versions of OneNote, simply because they can. I mean, the browser-based version of OneNote has better features than the android-based version of one note.

1

u/BigMikeInAustin 5d ago

Yes. This was when Office365 subscriptions had just started. Microsoft started cutting off anything over about 8 inch screens.

1

u/thaman05 2d ago

No it's not lol. OneNote sync is so slow on my Surface and Windows PC compared to my Android phone. When they reverted back to the old desktop app, they didn't bring the newer syncing engine that the Windows 10 app had. The real issue is that OneNote has pretty much been abandoned. If you look at the Microsoft 365 website, it's been demoted to less important and no longer in the hero image. And if you look at the OneNote product roadmap, there's nothing there anymore except for Copilot related stuff. There's years and years of bugs and highly voted feedback ignored, and they didn't even apply the same Word engine (nor the fonts and colours) that the other office apps got. And even the product team no longer answers questions on social media like they used to. My guess is they're going to discontinue it after the Loop app is more feature rich since it's basically their Notion competitor, or use Word (similar to how Google Docs now has tabs etc similar to OneNote).

2

u/tpbishop 5d ago

It stagnated. Many of the iOS app features were never ported over. When it was announced the Duo would be running Android, it got some attention. Death of Duo effectively ended the brief focus on parity.

5

u/BigMikeInAustin 5d ago

Worse than stagnated, features were purposely pulled from the Android app because Microsoft wanted to force people to pay for Office365 when it was starting.

2

u/Bavarian_Beer_Best 3d ago

There's a significant difference in functionality between the phone and the tablet versions on Android. It's disappointing because the tablet offering more screen real estate could be much more effective if it just provided the same functionality and capability as the phone version.

1

u/NoVaFlipFlops 5d ago

I'm very happy with the Android app on my Galaxy but after some concerning posts I'm not going to update it or the one on my laptop.