buying device for Pleco (July/August 2011)

[erans]

I've been messing around with the Android beta of Pleco and decided I need to have it when I head to China next month. My budget is around ~150ish USD, but it's flexible.

I've narrowed my options down to the following:

1. Try to find a cheap GSM iPhone (3G/S probably) or refurbished iPod touch. Not sure if there are cameras on all (or any) models of iPod touch.
2. Cheap, unlocked GSM Android phone.
3. Bring my Verizon (CDMA) phone and just use it as a dictionary.

Normally, if the decision was only between 2 and 3, I'd just bring my phone and use it as a dictionary. But I've heard that the iOS version of Pleco is (right now) waaaaay better than the Android version, but I've never used it.

So what do you guys think? Suck it up and get an iOS device or use an Android device and hope it gets to the same functionality as the iOS version soon? I want to stress that I'll be using the dictionary *a lot* over the next year and a half or so. Leaning towards iOS, but I don't know if there is any news regarding the development of the Android version.

Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

I've been messing around with the Android beta of Pleco and decided I need to have it when I head to China next month. My budget is around ~150ish USD, but it's flexible.

I've narrowed my options down to the following:

1. Try to find a cheap GSM iPhone (3G/S probably) or refurbished iPod touch. Not sure if there are cameras on all (or any) models of iPod touch.
2. Cheap, unlocked GSM Android phone.
3. Bring my Verizon (CDMA) phone and just use it as a dictionary.

Normally, if the decision was only between 2 and 3, I'd just bring my phone and use it as a dictionary. But I've heard that the iOS version of Pleco is (right now) waaaaay better than the Android version, but I've never used it.

So what do you guys think? Suck it up and get an iOS device or use an Android device and hope it gets to the same functionality as the iOS version soon? I want to stress that I'll be using the dictionary *a lot* over the next year and a half or so. Leaning towards iOS, but I don't know if there is any news regarding the development of the Android version.

Thanks!

I'm probably the last person who should be answering this, but just to get the discussion going:

In general I like iOS a lot better than Android, but the Android version is pretty close to the iOS version features-wise even now, and once we get a few missing features like flashcards implemented it'll be very close indeed. The iOS version looks prettier than the Android one, and will look prettier still soon, but functionality-wise the finished versions should be pretty close - the only major feature on the horizon that's likely to be iOS-only for a while is online flashcard sync / backup (via iCloud), but it's entirely possible that Google might roll out their own competing service for that at some point that we could tap into to offer equivalent functionality on Android. There might be other features that show up on iOS first but most of them shouldn't take too long to make it to the Android version too, and really complicated things might even debut for Android first (in the form of a public beta-test version posted in our discussion forums).

However, since the Android beta versions come with expiration dates (not to mention lots of bugs), I'd only recommend the Android version if you're confident that you can install new updates to it from China - will you have some sort of reliable internet access there? Also, if you do decide to get an Android version you might be better off waiting until you get there to buy it - the cheapest place to buy an unlocked Android phone is probably Hong Kong, but even in Beijing you're likely to find a much greater selection than you can generally get in the US.

The newest iPod Touches do include cameras, but they're really terrible and aren't very useful for OCR - hopefully when the new iPhone launches in September there'll be a new iPod Touch with a better camera to go with it, but that's probably too late for your purposes.