Dear Mike,
Some random comments. I love the product and if nothing ever changes I will still love it. These are just my opinions. I use iPhone. I am in flashcards 99.9% of my time in Pleco.
1. I'm left handed. I almost always use Pleco in one hand. When my left hand gets tired I switch to my right hand. I suspect right-handed people are probably similar and sometimes switch the phone to their left hand. Therefore, the most frequently used buttons need to be easily reachable from either hand. For every flashcard, I listen to the audio, and I very frequently listen to the audio multiple times. The audio button up in the far, far right hand corner is a problem for me when I hold the phone in my left hand. I have to readjust the phone and stretch my thumb across the viewing area obscuring the viewing area while I hit the audio button. At a minimum, the audio button should be in the middle. Also, on other screens, the audio button is in at least two different locations. I use the audio button all the time, so having it's location move around uses brain cells that would be better used learning the characters.
2. From the flashcards screen, the little arrow pointing to the left on the top tab is a problem. First, I think if I hit the left arrow, it should actually go back to the previous card, not bring up a menu that allows me to go back to the previous card. I can't think of any situation where I hit the left arrow and don't actually want to go back. Making me hit a left arrow twice to go back seems redundant. Also, once I'm in that menu and using the left and right arrows to back and forward in the flashcard list, having the forward button suddenly change to the skip button is a problem. I've skipped several cards this when when I have never in my life ever wanted to skip a card. Was the skip a card button put in because we don't have a real undo button? That's what I remember. But having the forward button change to skip causes me to accidentally skip some cards. The main reason I go back a card is to look at it more closely. Sometimes I hit the correct button (correctly) but think maybe I'd like to study it a while longer so I go back to have another look. The other reason I go back is because I hit correct when I should have hit incorrect and need to go back and then hid the middle tab to get to the set button so I can set the value to 50 as an incorrect card. Or I hit the incorrect button and should have hit the correct button so I go back and then hit the undo button. Having a real undo that actually puts me back in the state I was in before I hit the wrong button would be a big win for me. But having to first hit the back button, then hit the back button again, then hit the middle tab, then hit the set button, all to change the card to incorrect is a bit of a hassle. At a minimum, I think the set button should be on the back tab along with the undo button. Better would be to have a real undo which would set the score back to where it was previously, and then give me the "check" and "X" boxes again to that I can hit the right button.
3. Also, on the left arrow go back tab, I often hit the button and it lights up but nothing happens so when I immediately and quickly and instinctively hit the back arrow on the new menu, there really isn't a back arrow there because the new menu didn't come up and I've hit the "correct' button on the new flashcard. I don't think it's an issue of the button being too small, because the button lights up. Perhaps I'm hitting the next button so quickly that the first button press doesn't take affect and the next button press cancels out the first? I don't know, but I do have to consciously wait for the next menu to come up before hitting the second back button because the back button tab lighting up is not sufficient for the button to actually activate the next menu.
4. In flashcards, I want the definitions to come from ABC and have force definitions turned on, but I sometimes get definitions from another dictionary instead.
5. I use the add to category toggle in flashcards and it often says add to or delete from null instead of the name of the category.
6. Hitting the audio button is inconsistent. When I had a Palm, when I hit it twice, and I'm set for alternating voices, it would skip one voice. For instance, if the female had a bad pronunciation, I could hit the button twice quickly and it would skip the female and play the male. I could hit it twice again and it would again skip the female and play the male. My point is that it was consistent and I could figure out how to make it work for me. On iPhone if I hit it twice in succession, sometimes it plays both voices, sometimes it skips one and plays one, sometimes it starts one voice and then stops and jumps to the other voice. I would just like a consistent behavior. Also, and this probably has nothing to do with you, when I use a BlueTooth headset, the delays are horrible. Sometimes the audio slips into a mode where it actually works. I press a button and hear the audio. But most of the time, I press the audio button and wait 4-5 seconds to hear the audio. So I don't use my BlueTooth headset even though I would like to. By the way, the BlueTooth headset works fine for the phone, no delays, no problems.
7. I use repetition spacing and love it. Works for me fine, but then I study every day. Some days I have more time than other days. If I know I will have very little time tomorrow, I try to finish today's words and start on tomorrows. To do that I move the date on the iPhone to tomorrow and start on the flashcards. Of course that now screws up my calendar and alarms on other applications. So I would prefer some way of doing the cards due tomorrow without having to adjust my clock. Being able to adjust one or two days forward (or back for those days that I don't finish everything) would be useful to me. I'm not sure it would be useful to anyone else.
8. I'd like to have visible scroll bars. In the popup definition for example, the scroll bars don't show up until I actually start to scroll. I'd like to see them as an indication that there is more information that could be scrolled.
9. I often get confused with homonyms and so like to select the pinyin and find other words with the same pinyin. I could do that on Palm but not yet on iPhone.
10. It would be nice in the character database if the "characters" "containing" were sorted by relevancy so we saw the most common first. Would also be nice to play sound.
11. For my hand, it is a bit hard to hit buttons on the top or on the bottom. A little above the bottom is easier. So I would vote for infrequently used buttons on the bottom and frequently used buttons above those.
12. I use a font size of 22 for a lot of the roman alphabet characters, but a font size of 22 for hanzi is hard for me to read especially at night when I have the display brightness turned down low. The minimum useful hanzi font size for me is 24. But a 24 for roman alphabet is bigger than necessary. Can you set it up for mixed font sizes so I could use 22 for roman and 24 (or 26) for hanzi?
13. When selecting text with the |< and |> buttons, they won't select past a forward slash. So it is difficult so select a word that has an alternate character identified by a preceding forward slash.
That's it for now. I didn't want to say anything until I had a chance to get used to the iPhone after having used the Palm for so many years.
John
". You guys on the other hand are receptive to suggestions and sincerely interested in find the best using experience.