I don't have an iCloud email address. My AppleID is at my own domain and used for everything (else) Apple related. So now I have to grab an iCloud account just for notes? Why on earth are the using MAIL for notes at all? On the Mac they removed Notes from Mail into its own app. They should just store that data on iCloud like any other random app does.

The only reason I'm trying to use my imap account is to avoid having to create an iCloud email address specifically for this.

Creating a note on the iPhone while set to use the imap account doesn't even hit the network to transmit anything. It's not using imap at all. Checking the notes prefs doesn't show any option to select "default account" which I briefly saw at one point. Deleting the imap account does not remove the notes, proving they weren't part of the imap account to begin with.

Totally broken.