I’ve used this app for the better part of the last decade, and it’s taken me from my first steps into Russian to near-native fluency. But everything else is nearly perfect and contrary to what other reviewers have said, there is a 'Restore Purchases' button that allows you to redownload your purchased dictionaries on any of your iOS devices.
You also have to disable auto lock on your iPhone to complete the download because the download will turn off as soon as the iPhone goes to sleep. Maybe this is because the company is located in Russia, but this is terribly annoying. I have a broadband connection with 50mps and it still takes a good hour or so, with the phone plugged in to download a 170mb sound file. The only problem I've encountered is the download speed for downloading the dictionary and sound files. The icon is attractive, the photo scanning function on the iPhone app works perfectly, and you can set it to automatically search copied text making it a good choice for reading in foreign languages.
It's nice to finally have all of my dictionaries in one place with full pronunciation, lists of inflected forms and even idiom dictionaries. I’m sure they’ll do the same thing to this app when they find another way to re-release it to make everyone pay even more for something they already paid for. Since my old app is dead and gone, I’m going to buy paper dictionaries with that money and scan/OCR process it all myself so no one can yank it out from under me again.ĭon’t be surprised if your several-hundred-dollar investment into the in-app purchases disappears in the next 4 years or so.
In-app purchases of the dictionaries I need in order to have a standard working translator’s dictionary would now cost me well over $300, and if I wanted it to be more complete, over $500. By the way, it has an almost identical icon and name. Now there’s this app that’s taking the place of a product I already paid for. Then it was pulled entirely from the App Store. The old app was first “put out to pasture,” left unmaintained and unsupported. This app is a replacement for a Lingvo translator’s dictionary app that users paid less to use, but had most definitions needed to perform accurate translations. I can not vouch for the support of other languages, but if you are a committed English-speaking student of Russian (or vice versa) then this app is bordering on indispensable.
And, besides the overly long stretch of time that took to update for iPhone X models, the app support has been great. (If you add more of these, I will buy them!) There are thankfully no monthly service or subscription fees, which is a worrying rare benefit for apps as nice as this one.
(If you’re still dabbling, stick to the free offerings for awhile before investing further.) This app was my crutch when learning to read poetry and prose, and I’m so thankful for it.Īside from the excellent Russian-English dictionaries, there are a couple very comprehensive Russian-Russian explanatory dictionaries that I wholeheartedly recommend as well. I recommend this dictionary to all my students who are serious about learning the language because the significant cost inevitably pays for itself multiple times over.