Flashonary - Chinese-English, Chinese-German Flashcard Dictionary 12+

Lots to love but...

Update: it works well on my iPad Mini so I will upgrade from one star to three.

I love the searchable dictionary, tone color characters (add on), print/PDF option (add on), and audio (add on). I even bought the HSK1 add on Flashcards pack. All together I spent 28 dollars to get the tools I needed to study. It was well worth it for an interactive study tool that I could customize for my needs. The only problem is that after I bought the HSK pack, the app crashed. It would not work at all and crashed each time I tried to open the flash decks (they were working prior to that add on). I have emailed the company and would love to update this review with a positive outcome.
Here’s to being hopeful...

Audio????

UPDATE: WHERE IS THE AUDIO. It’s gone. Try to restore, and it’s not there. Spent $10 for nothing!!!!! Felt cheated.

Old review:
I'd downloaded this app for a long time and haven't been using it till recently when I'm willing to part $10 for in-app-purchase pronunciation feature. Now, this is my favorite app for learning Chinese (even though I still miss my $10).

One star off for...

A) Some words do not have the most common definitions. (Easy work around by adding ur own definition.)

B) No upgrade since Dec 2011. I haven't found any bugs yet... But since iOS 6 is out I... I just want an upgrade to know that this app is still supported by an existing company/individual.

E) Wish it comes with flashcard sets of most common 5000 words or sets of hsk words level 1-5. But I do find that the process of creating ur own flashcard sets (looking up the words and double check the definitions) is part of learning Chinese.

D) I'm still unclear as to how and in what order the flashcards are shown in. Wish there is more than just two methods and that there is explanation / description for individual method.... So exactly what does the color on the left side of the word in the flashcard list means???

Developer Response ,

Please contact me on support@flashonary.com so we can work through your audio problems. In the mean time you can try ensuring that your device is not set to vibrate/silent and the audio is turned up. Most people who have problems with the audio find this can be fixed by ensuring their device is not set to silent/vibrate. Let me know if this helps.

To answer some of your previous items:
- Yes, flashonary is still supported
- update on the way
- you can download the hsk sets, common sets and flash card sets for textbooks by going to the more tab then flashcards.
- there are two types of shuffling/ordering of the flashcards: random and lietner. Radon just randomly shuffles flashcards, lietner shows the flashcards based on how well you know them. Those u know are shown less often and those you don’t know well are shown more often. The colors on the left of each word in the flashcard list depicts how well you know each word - red for not well, green for very well. You can change the shuffling method by going to the settings app-flashonary-shuffle method.

A Few Issues, But a Decent Flashcard App

First, of course, this app is already a good deal considering it's free and functional. The built-in dictionary makes assembling my weekly flash cards for class very easy, even if it is not the most inclusive dictionary out there. However, I encountered a small glitch when adding dictionary entries to my cards occasionally when it would mistake the one I was trying to add with one I had just added. This is not too troublesome, though.

The main downside with this app is the limited utility I get from the "study" option. It constantly repeats 3 or 4 flash cards from any one set almost indefinitely at times. Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to control the format in which the cards are displayed; in other words, there is no "show definition only" setting, etc.

Overall, however, this is reasonably useful app for studying Chinese vocabulary.