AnkiMobile Flashcards
By Damien Elmes
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Description
AnkiMobile is a mobile companion to Anki, a powerful, intelligent flashcard program that is free, multi-platform, and open-source. Sales of this app support the development of both the desktop and mobile clients, which is why the app is priced as a desktop application.
AnkiMobile was designed to allow existing Anki users to review on the go. Reviewing is fully featured, but while basic card adding and editing features are provided (including the ability to attach photos and record your voice), the desktop program is needed for more complex editing and to explore all the recorded statistics. If you have not used the desktop program before, please familiarize yourself with it before you consider buying this app.
AnkiMobile offers a number of things lacking in other flashcard programs:
- A proven spaced repetition algorithm that learns from your answers and schedules reviews at the optimum time.
- Seamless integration with the online and desktop versions. You can synchronize all your decks with the touch of a button, and if your Apple device is ever lost or broken, you can continue reviewing with the desktop until it is replaced.
- Support for scientific markup with LaTeX.
- Support for furigana for Japanese.
- A wealth of statistics are stored in your deck as you review, and many of these can be inspected within the app. These statistics can help you plan your future studies, and are a source of motivation.
- Flexible card display format that allows you to display an arbitrary number of fields on the front and back of cards.
Other notable features:
- Full support for offline images and audio.
- Your font and color settings in the desktop client are respected, and scaled to fit the mobile screen. You can adjust the scaling.
- The ability to undo reviews, card suspensions and more.
- Swipes, taps and buttons can all be configured to allow quick reviews and quick access to various features.
Please note:
- This app assumes you are familiar with the desktop program - if you're not, please try it out before buying the app.
- As mentioned above, this app requires the desktop application for initial setup and some editing operations. It is a supplement to the desktop program, not a replacement for it.
- Decks can be synchronized across devices via a free AnkiWeb account, or copied back and forth via iTunes' file sharing feature, for devices on iOS3.2+.
Like all apps, AnkiMobile can be purchased once and then used on up to 5 devices in a household using the same Apple ID. For information on bulk discounts for educational institutions, please see http://www.apple.com/itunes/education/
What's New in Version 1.8
* Fix errors some people experienced when loading the deck or answering cards, and prevent similar errors from being possible in the future.
* Check for the start of a new day when answering cards.
* Fix for cramming when max failed is set to 0.
* Updated tap handling, which should ensure that taping links won't show the answer, and which stops the screen turning grey when tapping at the far edges.
* In Japanese decks, audio is no longer rendered as furigana if it's sitting next to other text without a space.
* Updated sibling card handling to match the desktop 1.2.6.
Customer Reviews
Wow!
The last update brought so much more study-firepower to the table (camera, microphone, speed, etc.). The develepor really listens to his users! This is not to mention the algorithm in use really helps improve memory AND save time while doing so. Best money I ever spent!
Anybody interested should really check out the free Desktop version available, it uses the same algorithm and will give you a feel for how to setup Decks before you eventually go mobile.
Overpriced
I've read again and again that AnkiMobile employs an amazingly awesome card scheduling algorithm. That's probably true. Although I don't really know whether I should to study a card I just answered again in 1 day, 4 days, or 9 days, I believe that this is my shortcoming and not AnkiMobile's.
So what does AnkiMobile have to offer aside from this application of modern psychological research?
You might have read this before, but AnkiMobile doesn't offer you the ability to download or create study materials, you have to either get decks from your computer using the non-mobile application or you have to create an account on their web service. And even with their web service, you still can't download other people's decks. Basically, without the desktop application, AnkiMobile is a nice looking menu screen.
And Anki on the desktop /doesn't/ offer you any help selecting other user's decks to download. Any of the decks could contain misinformation or errors, formatting and grammar mistakes, incomplete data sets, anything, and you would have no idea! Remember, since you don't know the material yourself, you will have no way to verify the information you're studying. Reviews, ratings, anything! Please!
AnkiMobile /also/ doesn't offer you the graphs and charts the desktop version has, although it does have some raw and sometimes meaningless statistics (it tells me that I added my cards 1.7 years ago, even though I just downloaded this yesterday).
AnkiMobile doesn't offer you any information about what state the program is in. I did my first review one evening, and the next morning on the train it told me I had already completed all my reviewing for the day. When I do manage to start my review, I have no idea how many more cards I'll see before the review is done. When I "study more", sometimes messages appear asking me if I want to continue reviewing or stop for the day. Did I hit the "end review" button, or did I complete a set, or what? Despite all the colored text and unlabeled numbers, I have no idea what's going on.
Furthermore, at version 1.8 AnkiMobile is /still/ doesn't offer you a bug-free experience. I had already encountered a number of hiccups in the first half hour of use: I clicked on "review early" and got an exception message. I set up my quick bar and the rightmost button was unclickable because it was covered up by a (sometimes invisible) button with gears. Lastly, answer text was split in the middle of a word on several occasions.
This application justifies $5, maybe $10. But there are a lot of review/flashcard applications out there, many free, and you should think hard whether $25 is worth a little more expediency or not. Expediency in the long run, that is. Unless you're already an avid Anki user, It won't take you any less than 15 minutes to get started after you've downloaded this.
Perfect companion to Desktop Anki
I have been using the desktop version for years as it is the only flashcard program to work with the Tibetan unicode fonts. I quickly realized it is the best flashcard program hands down due to its flexibility with information. Now that the iPhone works with Tibetan unicode, buying this app was a no brainer. And it works great. I look forward to the future developments
- $24.99
- Category: Education
- Updated: Feb 10, 2011
- Version: 1.8
- Size: 4.9 MB
- Language: English
- Seller: Damien Elmes
- © Damien Elmes
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.1 or later
