Move Over, Apple Pencil: Paper’s New iPhone App Allows You Take Notes


FiftyThree’s new iPhone app, Paper, could be the best response to the new Apple Pencil. It’s everything that Apple wanted to create and more. If you’re not looking to dish out $99 for the new Pencil, then Paper is a great free alternative.

Paper, the popular iPad sketching app, is finally available for the iPhone. That has some people wondering if it’s just the actual app on a smaller screen. This app is more than just sketching and taking notes. You can create lists and share them with your friends via text messages.

This new iPhone app also comes with swiping features. Swipe right to create a circle that you can check off later. Swipe left to make a bullet point. This new app has the classic features of the iPad Paper app such as color mixing, drawing tools, and the ability to sketch on other people’s drawings. Plus, it has the ability to make and share lists. It’s the perfect app for designers, illustrators, artists, college kids, and even busy moms.

The Paper app does more than that. It allows you to take a photo or choose one from your camera roll. It’s also smart enough that it will help you create charts and diagrams. With just a pinch, you can view or pan in on your ideas. You can also use this feature to view all of your ideas.

You can also save your texts, notes, photos, and sketches so you can view them or organize them the way you want. You can even combine your ideas on the discrete Spaces feature, which allows you to customize them with a name and cover photo.

FiftyThree, the designers of the new iPhone app, polled 6,000 smartphone users on how they took notes. A whopping 86 percent recorded their ideas through photos and screengrabs and then used text. According to FiftyThree’s CEO, Georg Petschnigg, this new app is like having a sticky note on your phone.

“I look at the spiritual source of Paper for iPhone, it borrows heavily from the sticky note — not the physical sticky note, but what people do with sticky notes. Composing quick ideas. Brainstorms. Reminding themselves of something.

“Then we realized we were onto something big, that marked a fundamental shift of behavior. This wasn’t a sticky note anymore, this became a different beast. Through the cellphone camera, [people] became much more visually attuned.”

If you love using a stylus but are against the new Apple Pencil, Paper’s Pencil will work on both the iPhone and iPad. It even costs $49 less than its competitor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfs_-R8ZzHo

Petschnigg says he’s not worried about the new Apple Pencil, which mimics his device in both purpose and name. He says that the Paper app will also support the new Pencil, and he hopes that Apple’s step into the stylus industry will have everyone interested.

The Paper for iPhone app is available for iOS only on the App Store. It’s also part of the universal update that applies the new features on both the iPhone and iPad app. It also requires the iOS 8 for use.

[Image: Stephen Lam/Getty Images]

Share this article: Move Over, Apple Pencil: Paper’s New iPhone App Allows You Take Notes
More from Inquisitr