Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4271 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 1 of 5 12 February 2013 at 2:04am | IP Logged |
I might finally get a smartphone soon. My whole family uses iPhones, but I'm leaning toward going with something Android based. I like the idea of an open system versus a closed one better since so many people develop for Android and I won't have to do it the Apple way or the highway. However, there's one big reason why iPhone might be better for me than Android (and this is the only reason I found). There's no version of Ultralingua French/English and German/English for Android. It's available for iPhone and some OSes I definitely won't use (like Palm OS and Windows Mobile), but not for Android. I've used Ultralingua German/English for years and French/English recently. It's great. You can look up any word just like a paper English/German (or /French) and get its translations as you would expect. However, if it's a verb, you can also click on "conjugate" and get all the present tense conjugations. Then if you want to you can choose the conjugations for any other tense you want. I use Ultralingua all the time when studying French or German. It has a complete grammatical reference where you can look up any grammar you need to.
This program is my go-to guy on my Windows 7 laptop whenever I'm studying languages. It would be great to have it available to me at all times on a smartphone. Ultralingua would be a big reason for me to go with an iPhone instead of an Android one. However, I have big reasons to go Android too, the biggest of which is I would rather go with a carrier that doesn't lock me into a 1 or two year contract. That means something like Family Mobile or Cricket. AT&T royally @#$%ed me some years back, so using them is out of the question. I'm not wild about T-Mobile, but they might be acceptable. I still don't like getting roped into a contract.
So my question is: Is there something like Ultralingua that is Android based? If that were the case, then it's a slam dunk to go for an Android phone. I can always keep using Ultralingua when I use my laptop.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4710 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 2 of 5 13 February 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged |
I prefer android over apple for the same reason you mention: I don't like the way apple
operates. However, I can mention another French learning app which is only available on
apple: TV5's 7 jours sur la planete.
Unfortunately, it looks like developers in France prefer apple over android. Grrrrrr.
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4271 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 3 of 5 24 February 2013 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
An update: I talked with a Cricket salesperson. Turns out I can get Cricket service with an iPhone. Android's not the only option there. I also wrote to Ultralingua to urge them to come out with an Android version. I can't imagine why they wouldn't want money from the very large market that is Android users.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
RedBeard Senior Member United States atariage.com Joined 5903 days ago 126 posts - 182 votes Speaks: Ancient Greek* Studies: French, German
| Message 4 of 5 24 February 2013 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
Since Android is LINUX based (and the hardware keeps getting more powerful) it will probably be possible to run "iphone" on your droid in a Virtual Phone instance. Ha ha.
*grin*
:wq!
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4271 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German
| Message 5 of 5 01 March 2013 at 5:40pm | IP Logged |
RedBeard wrote:
Since Android is LINUX based (and the hardware keeps getting more powerful) it will probably be possible to run "iphone" on your droid in a Virtual Phone instance. Ha ha.
*grin*
:wq! |
|
|
Oh, really? Kind of like running a Windows app under Linux via WINE. Thanks for the idea.
1 person has voted this message useful
|