Review: Voice Memos

While not enough of us have access to webOS 2.0 (and beyond), those who do can finally enjoy apps that access the microphone API’s. This means that webOS will, at last, be able to showcase a voice recording function. As of this writing, there are officially two voice recording apps for webOS, both of them great – though up to this point it seems Voice Memos by Appstuh has been winning in terms of feedback from users. After our testing, we can see why.

Upon launching the app you’re brought to a simple interface where all of your recorded memos are listed. (Of course if this is your first go-around, then tap on the ‘+’ icon  to create a new memo.) This brings you to the creation scene where you can name your memo and give it a brief description, as well as selecting a choice of either high, medium or low quality recording. As a side note, you don’t need to name your memo before recording, you can do this after which is great and could save you valuable time. The most notable thing on this screen, however, is the cool looking retro reels which animate as soon as you tap the record button that’s sandwiched between them. Nice touch. A notification will pop up in the dashboard area to confirm that recording has started, and as customary to webOS, this will sit in the tray so you can always navigate away from the app to do whatever else it is you need to do whilst recording.

When it’s time to stop recording, you’ll be brought back to the main scene where the memos are listed and you can choose to sort these by newest first, oldest first, A-Z or Z-A, and tapping one will bring you to a playback scene where you can rename the memo and, of course, play it back. The app does have a preferences section too that gives you quite a few simple options to choose between, themes, format of the memo save name, auto record, set the app to be the default memo handler etc etc. Pretty much all you could need for a voice app. Perhaps the only suggestion would be an option to change the recording quality, it currently records at 705kbps | 44.1KHz | 16bit, however the sound quality at this level is amazing and crystal clear, it was tested with a TV turned up pretty loud in the background to try and emulate some background noise and on playback, the sound of the TV was hardly noticeable against the crisp clarity of the voice.

One of the other smart touches to this app is the share function, which allows you to email the memo to someone and you can also turn an option on in the preferences which will put a handy link to the app in the App Catalog in the signature of your email.

Complaints? Just a couple minor ones. For one, the user-interface is a bit spartan, though sometimes less is more. More than anything, we’d like to see the ability to categorize our recordings – one category for work, the other for play, yet another for groceries, for example. The ability to color-coordinate recordings might be useful, here. We’d also like the option to confirm saving a recording, rather than having to find the recording ourselves for deletion later.

All in all, this is a great app that does what it says on the tin, with a little sprinkle of UI candy and a whole lot of familiar webOS function. Key differentiators for Voice Memos are the very straightforward yet flexible user interface and the ability to record different audio bit rates.  It’s very nice work so far, and we look forward to seeing further updates to this app soon!

Interested? Go here to download Voice Memos directly to your device! (webOS 2.0 and greater only)