Describe the Chinese learning app you wish you had on your phone/pda (besides Pleco)

[character]

Pleco is wonderful, but I was wondering what else you would want to help learn Chinese? What would it do?

Now that there are three (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre) newish high-end phone lines with Software Development Kits, this might be time to float your ideas (or code it yourself).

Edited January 15, 2009 at 02:30 AM by character

[Erbse]

Or BlackBerry...

I'm a BlackBerry programmer and I've wondered about writing Chinese learning apps for BlackBerrys, but I fear that the demand is to small so it will hardly be worth the effort. I'd rather write some English learning app for Chinese people. I guess same is true for other platforms as well, however if You think different, feel free to convince me ;)

[imron]

Except the number of Chinese with Blackberries is quite small apparently, so it might just work out even either way

[character]

IIRC, the other issue with Blackberries is that until recently they didn't have touchscreens.

What kind of apps did you consider developing?

---

How would people want to study grammar on a mobile?

[Erbse]

Personally I don't care much about touchscreens, but tastes are different.

The obvious thing to develop would be a basic flash card for words, maybe for sentences as well.

Grammar tests are also possible is some way. Example:

An English sentence is given, the Chinese equivalent is also given, but with one empty space. The user has to decide if 了or 过 or nothing has to be entered.

While vocabulary flash card programs are quite easy to do as vocab lists already exist, the second type is very labour intensive, because all the grammar tests have to be developed. The typical price for BlackBerry software is mostly in the range of 5 to 20 $US. If there are a few hundred sales over 1 year, then there is not much time for developing an high quality grammar testing system. But with higher prices sales go down, unless the product is from a well known company or really has a lot to offer, which takes time to develop.

My guess is, there are just to few people demanding such kind of software. Yes Chinese is becoming important, but let me look at the extracurricular language classes at my university. Chinese is the courses which struggles every semester to reach the minimum class size of 5 people, while the Spanish course is at its capacity limit and You have to hurry to get a seat.