現在找找看。電腦還是手機?

xiaocu

Member
Hello!

I started with Chinese a few months ago, and one of my classmates recommended me to use an
electronic dictionary. He is a very good Japanese speaker, and uses a Casio that was designed for
Japanese learners of Chinese. Now, I can see how it is very beneficial for him to study Chinese in
Japanese, as he gets to practice both languages. Unfortunately most of these things are designed for
native Asian users. He almost talked me into buying one, but someone told me about pleco, and
now I am looking for the right hardware. My classmate says the electric dictionary helped him probably
the most in his quite outstanding "performance" of mastering well over 4000 kanji in 3 years, so I
kind of trust him in his recommendation. He says basically 3 functions are that is of major significance:
1 access to sound samples
2 hyper-links
3 history of your activity\study

If I am not mistaken, the first two are granted in pleco, but what about the 3rd one?

Is there someone here who has extensive experience with learning with an electric dict. (preferably a
casio) and pleco? If so, could they please provide some info about their impressions?

My other question goes to hardware. I am considering to buy an iPad mini (as someone suggested here
in the forum), or buying a smartphone (was planning a budget of a max. 200 euros/ 270 USD). I found
the motorola moto G, that just came out, quite attractive, but I am not sure if I wouldnt be better off with
a second hand iPhone 4 or possibly 4S, in case I go for the smartphone. I recall reading on this forum
that android gets less support in terms of applications and upgrades.
What I want to use the device for is pretty much exhausted in pleco, it would be for language learning.
I understand its much easier to carry around a smartphone than the ipad mini, this one point I am
considering. I am not sure whether OCR would be important for me at the moment. Could become
later, but for now I will most likely be browsing the dictionary and use it for checking the Hanzi that I
have forgotten the meaning of, but still can write (this happens to me quite a lot).

Sorry if my post is a little confusing. The main questions are:
- if I was to go for android like the motorola, what benefits would I get from that?
- if I stay with Apple, what speaks for the smartphone and what for the mini tablet?

Thank you,
G.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We do offer a history function too, yes:

http://pleco.com/ipmanual/dict.html#history

As far as Android versus iOS, at the moment the Android version has two features the iOS version lacks - voice input (provided by a free Google search feature) and a second text-to-speech voice option ("Lulu"), along with the general Android benefits of easier file sharing (can directly access files on an SD card) and (important to some privacy-sensitive users) the ability to download / buy directly from us rather than going through Google or Apple.

Meanwhile, the iOS advantages over Android are going to narrow a bit when Android gets its own 3.0 update soon, but advantages that will likely remain for the foreseeable future are Cantonese text-to-speech (a free iOS system feature), a prettier / cleaner user interface, much nicer typography, live lookups of words on web pages, and support for EPUB / PDF files in the document reader and for PDF files in OCR.

More generally, since iOS is responsible for about 3/4 of our revenues and 4/5 of our profits at the moment, business-wise we're strongly motivated to devote more attention to it than to Android / release new features on it before we release them on Android. Now of course that profit split could change in the future (indeed if it weren't for that possibility we might not be offering an Android app at all), and we're certainly paying attention to our Android app too for that reason, but the advantage is very much with iOS at the moment.
 

gato

状元
I would suggest going with a smartphone as you'll almost always have it with you, which would allow you to study anywhere, on the toilet, while waiting in line at the movies, etc.

The Moto G appears to have much better specs than iPhone 4S. If your budget is limited and you have to choose between these two, then the Moto G is probably the better choice.
 
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