[Release] iChinese 1.0, Chinese Dictionary/Trainer with handwriting character lookup

[hubermat]

Hello all,

iChinese 1.0 brings Chinese Dictionaries (English, German) natively to the iPhone / iPod Touch. You can draw Chinese characters directly onto the touchscreen - with this you can look up any unknown character.

Furthermore iChinese is training (hand-)writing and reading of Chinese characters with lessons, that are derived from the famous "Practical Chinese Reader" book series. It is an ideal companion for your Chinese training course at school or university.

[Updated/Clarified]
The first four training lessons are for free, all further lessons will cost 0.99 Euro (with rebate-system 3-for-2).
To use the dictionaries, you will have to enable the dictionary functionality for only 4.99 Euro. The different dictionaries (so far Chinese-English and Chinese-German) are then downloadable for free.

More Infos (including screenshots): http://www.ichinese.de
Installer-Repository: http://ichinese.de/repo (Learning category)

Best regards,
Matthias Huber

[benderbends]

dissappointed

i was excited about this app...as i strongly need a chinese english dictionary, and the fact that it included lessons sounded like a nice extra.

First : its false advertising to state that the dictionary is free...when its not. the only way the dictionary works is if you buy the input method, which costs 4.99. So why not just sell it together and advertise it as 4.99 instead of tricking people?

Second : i am getting frequent crashes. it was happening every 5 seconds or so when using the dictionary...but after a reboot of phone, it seems to be less frequent, but still too often. im on 1.1.4 btw.

[laz305]

killer app thx

[Taniban]

I dont really understand this program, I tried writting some characters in the lessons and its just saying im writting it wrong eventhough I know I'm not. Crazy... but the idea was good though.

[hubermat]

dissappointed

i was excited about this app...as i strongly need a chinese english dictionary, and the fact that it included lessons sounded like a nice extra.

First : its false advertising to state that the dictionary is free...when its not. the only way the dictionary works is if you buy the input method, which costs 4.99. So why not just sell it together and advertise it as 4.99 instead of tricking people?

Second : i am getting frequent crashes. it was happening every 5 seconds or so when using the dictionary...but after a reboot of phone, it seems to be less frequent, but still too often. im on 1.1.4 btw.

Dear benderbends,

of course it was not my intention to disappoint somebody.
So let me quickly respond to your points.

The iChinese application as well as the first four training lessons are for free, all further lessons and the dictionary functionality will cost a few cents.

This is from my post, so no false advertising here. On the iChinese website is written

Dictionary and stroke input functionality has to be enabled once for 4.99 Euro.

Indeed both dictionaries, that are available at the moment, are free, but require the dictionary feature to be unlocked.
It would be interesting for me to know from where exactly you got a different impression, so that I can communicate this better in the future. Perhaps we can discuss this offline via PM.

Second, about the crashes. This should of course not happen! I am taking this serious and will PM you to try to solve this issue. As you have payed for the functionality, you will get support.

Best regards,
Matthias Huber

I dont really understand this program, I tried writting some characters in the lessons and its just saying im writting it wrong eventhough I know I'm not. Crazy... but the idea was good though.

Dear taniban,

the writing exercise is very sensitive to the number of strokes and the stroke order. So after showing the result of the exercise, tap on the "Play" icon in the lower right corner of the drawing are. iChinese will animate the character as it expects it to be drawn. For multi-character words or phrases, you can switch the animation/the result view to another character by tapping on one of the characters in the character entry line below the drawing are.

If you have further questions, just drop me a PM or write to [email protected].

Best regards,
Matthias Huber

[Ximpostrxx]

@humerbat
I think what benderbends is trying to say is that you poseted that the dictionary is free, which in fact it isn't, you have to pay 4.99 to use it. Yes, sure the files are free but the use of them cost 4.99

[rossmnz]

Man, i wish they would stop releasing all these crap chinese dictionaries etc!!

What us whities really want is an english input-pinyin output dictionary.

I would pay good money for that anytime!!

[hubermat]

Man, i wish they would stop releasing all these crap chinese dictionaries etc!!

What us whities really want is an english input-pinyin output dictionary.

I would pay good money for that anytime!!

Hi rossmnz, of course you can enter english (full-text search) and get all hits from the dictionary also in pinyin. But if you are looking for a fullblown translation english->pinyin, this will be very hard to get :-)

Best regards,
Matthias

[centre]

Is the cost for the dictionary a one time cost?


Edit:
Why do you link safari to the german version of paypal? Surely the majority of iPhone users aren't native german speakers.
Another suggestion is to replace the dictionary buttons "你好" to "Hanzi", "Ni hao" to "Pinyin" and "Hello" to "English". Makes more sense imho.

[hubermat]

Hello Centre,
yes, it's a one time cost for the dictionary functionality.
And thank you for the hint with paypal. I have fixed it.
Best regards,
Matthias Huber

[白深德]

This thing works. Like woah. It's the best $12 bucks I spent so far on Chinese language learning, and I desperately need to learn this cursed tongue having moved here for work.
Anyway after a couple hundred+ on textbooks, this thing taught me more characters in 3 weeks than I learned in 3 months in China. Now I got 120+ in my brain, and I'm hooked, Mattias... give us Practical Chinese Reader 2... or whatever the &*( you want to give us, just more, 'cause I gotta learn quick.

[centre]

It is really REALLY good, and I know for a fact that it's coming for 2.0.

Bought the dictionary feature for 9$ a while back and it is nothing short of revolutionary. Easily on the best apps for the iPhone and the main reason I'm keeping mine. The market for it may not be enormous but it is sure growing.

[白深德]

centre, I third that second. That is if it's possible for a first to third a second. In any case HOW'd you find out if this is coming for 2.0!?! WHEN??! This is the only reason I haven't upgraded my firmware...
This application HAS EVERY WORD IN ENGLISH TO CHINESE... including obscenities, slang, proper nouns like names of universities... I can't say enough good things about it... except a few misses from Chinese to English, but no one can do that right not even the best.
My GF's a Hong Kong chinese girl, and we were talking about my friend doing drugs in college and she didn't understand "marijuana" or "Massachusetts institute of technology" and this thing had both.
And that's not even touching the training which IMO is the best thing about it.
All it's missing is traditional character training and Jyutping/Yale romanizations for Cantonese. And who the hell needs all that?? It's already taught me 120 characters, and that's more than I can say for my textbooks. I NEED MORE!!! This program is ESSENTIAL for any foreigner (English or German dude) moving to China. Or just trying to learn but I did both so that's all that's on my mind.

Not to encourage you to raise the price... but seriously if you need dough to develop this or money for employees or something you should ask people... b/c you can bank on this, they should honestly require foreign students at Peking to buy an iPhone and practice with this program.