In all my years of college, I never once recorded a lecture because I knew I’d never listen to it.
Who wants to sit through multiple hour-long lectures, go home, and play back those same lectures at the end of an exhausting day?
And you can’t get to the exact part you want without trial and error.
Then imagine trying to do the same thing a week or month later when your recollection of that lecture, amidst a dozen others like that, is not as good.
I figured it was a waste of time. So, I took written notes and made them as detailed as time allowed. And I was fine with that.
Until last week.
I stumbled upon Samsung Notes’ voice recording feature during a meeting and realized it could have changed how I took notes in school. Here’s what I mean.
Samsung Notes ties every word to the moment you typed it
Anchor text here, anchor text there, anchor text everywhere
It only took a few taps to set up voice recording inside Samsung Notes. But the implementation is what blew me away.
I took notes while recording, simultaneously. After the meeting, I played the recording, and it perfectly synced with my notes.
At the start of the playback, the words were greyed out. Then, the app highlighted each word as soon as it reached the point where I typed it during the meeting.
Tapping a word took the audio to that point, letting me jump to specific parts of the recording instead of guessing where the part I’m looking for is.
While using the feature, I realized I could take terrible notes on purpose.
I typed only single words like Introduction (at the start of the lecture) and Takeaways (at the end), plus phrases to mark key points at different intervals.
Normally, the notes wouldn’t make much sense a few weeks or months later. But since it’s tied to the audio, I can listen back and get the context of the discussion.
I couldn’t help but wish I had it in school so I could write less. It may be too late for me, but if you’re still in college, it should come in handy.
That said, I’ll be using it in the once-in-a-blue-moon meetings and events I attend.
To use it:
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Open Samsung Notes and create a new note.
- Tap the plus icon and select Voice recording.
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Take notes as you normally would.
A phone call ends the recording, and so does a WhatsApp call
Samsung Notes: One at a time, please
After I started using Samsung Notes’ voice recorder, I decided to test a few things.
While recording, you can take notes by typing, using the S Pen, or hand-drawing, and it automatically maps to that part of the audio.
However, when you stop recording, anything you add is completely standalone. On the flip side, deleting a mapped text removes that timestamp.
The same applies to words. If you correct a word’s spelling (remove or add a letter), the rest of the word acts as an anchor to that jump point.
I tried to simulate a real-life situation where you might get a call or need to do something else on your phone. Here’s what I found.
When you start recording, minimizing the Notes app or opening most other apps doesn’t affect it. However, opening the Camera app or answering a call ends the session.
Interestingly, getting a WhatsApp call, even without answering, also ended the recording. But mobile calls didn’t, unless you picked up.
If any of these interfere with your recording, it stops and saves automatically, and you can’t resume it. You can start a new recording within the same note. But it’s placed on the same timeline as the first.
You can see the beginning of each new recording as a bulge on the timeline. Samsung also lets you select the second (and subsequent) recordings, and it jumps to their start point on the timeline.
To do this, tap the list icon in the upper-right corner and select the clip you want to listen to. They’re arranged in recording order.
Sharing the note as a Samsung Notes file preserves the audio file and time jumps. Other formats either remove the audio or keep it as a separate file.
You can only use audio-synced notes with the voice recorder inside Samsung Notes, not the Voice Recorder app.
Samsung Notes has bonus AI features
Auto-transcribe, auto-translate, auto-summarize
With AI so central to smartphones, it’s no surprise Samsung included some features in the Notes app.
You can automatically transcribe your audio, with speaker labels, and generate a summary of the transcript. You can also translate between languages.
To do this:
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Open your note and tap the Voice recording icon at the top of the screen.
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Tap the list menu icon in the upper-right corner and tap the Speech-to-text icon next to the audio you wish to transcribe.
However, your audio needs to be good for this to work.
When I tried my original meeting audio (which was bad since I was far from the speaker), the transcript was a complete miss. It invented words and entire paragraphs.
However, I got better results with clearer audio.
The Samsung Notes app includes an AI Audio eraser to improve poor audio. To use it, open Voice recording within your note and tap the Audio eraser button.
I’ve had Samsung Notes’ voice recorder without knowing
When I first came across the Notes’ voice recording, I thought it was a new AI feature. After doing a little research, I realized I’ve had it since August 2020.
Samsung released it as Audio Bookmark with the Galaxy Note20 before pushing it to the S20 later on. Which means it was on my S20, S22+, and S23+, and I didn’t know.
What surprised me more is how rare audio-synced notes are on Android, even with plenty of note-taking apps to choose from.
Google Keep doesn’t offer it. GoodNotes and Notability do, but the former restricts the feature to iOS, while the latter requires a subscription beyond your first five notes.
