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eStroke (易笔) app for iPhone and iPad


4.2 ( 8672 ratings )
Reference Education
Developer: EON Media Limited
6.99 USD
Current version: 5.1, last update: 1 year ago
First release : 27 Apr 2009
App size: 4.3 Mb

Mandatory database ~200MB needs to be downloaded once at startup. Choose Hong Kong is you are located outside China.
This mandatory database was previously included in the app making app update slow.

Tap on Animation Box to bring up the Keyboard. Select a Chinese Keyboard and then input a Chinese character to animate.

Tools from left to right are
1 Refresh character, long press to repeat continuously
2 Settings
3 Grade 1-6 vocabulary
4 Dictionary
5 Writing Practice
6 Flashcard
7 General writing

Pros and cons of eStroke (易笔) app for iPhone and iPad

eStroke (易笔) app good for

Nice, but this app got an excellent competitor: Pleco Chinese Dictionary. Until some time ago eStroke was my favorite among the E-C dictionaries. Extremely helpful for learners like me. Esp. all features which help to find characters, like stroke order, radicals etc. are included in a clever system. What I miss are several features as used in Pleco app, eg: - more dictionaries, which can be used parallel - excellent wildcard search - switching easily between traditional and simplified Hanzi by pressing a button any time one wants - in pleco all characters and words even of a pretty long Chinese compound word are shown in a list with all translations, in eStroke one has to search for each character by itself. :( For exercising how to write eStroke is still my preferred app. it also uses more colors. I hope that the masters of eStroke will improve this app soon and add some additional features. Otherwise the price of over 5 EUR IMHO is no longer justified. :)))
With solid and frequent updates, I have been thoroughly impressed with the quality of this application. Its helped me greatly in my Chinese studies and has become a constant companion both inside and outside the house. Finding out what new words mean has never been easier, and with built in flashcards, history, and all the other bells and whistles Im surprised that this application is only a mere $5. By far one of the best applications Ive ever purchased!
This is flat-out one of the best applications Ive ever paid for. In terms of Mandarin reference tools, not only do I consider this the best app out there, but I still havent even found a website on the whole INTERNET that Ive found to be more useful than eStroke. The stroke order feature is the reason I bought it (stroke order is the key, for me at least, to learning how to write characters), but beyond that, there is a great dictionary feature, as well as many many ways to customize the app to suit your learning style. It has never crashed once, and even without iOS4 (i have the 1st gen touch), music can be played while using it! To anybody serious about learning how to write in Chinese, this app is an absolute must-buy. Thank you!
This is the most complete app i have found to assist me in learning mandarin. It shows characters used in words, organizes words in order of how children at school would learn them and has stroke order for all characters the only thing they are missing is pronounciationof characters. Adding this would make the app worth much more than $7. But even without the pronounciation, this is the best app in the app store for learning mandarin.
I tried almost all the Chinese teaching application. Before I used plenty different applications for different aspects of study, but estroke replaced almost all of them. And the best thing about it is I now have all functions in one application! First time UI seemed to be complicated, but after few hours you just get comfortable with it. Also this is the only one application my Chinese teacher recommended. Some features I wish wish estroke would have: - test for meaning/hanzi by using touch input. I believe this force to remember the character better. - pinyin tone test, as this is the common mistake made by students - dictation test. This will make relationship between characters and sound stronger. Just a should file for word played and application allow to answer then check if answer is correct. but anyway this application is the best I ever used even on computer. Thank you for estroke!
This is the best self learning tool Ive encountered in the entire store! Great app, and with frequent useful updates!

Some bad moments

I was initially excited about this app, but was quickly disappointed to find how many characters are mis-rendered. As a result, I cant in good conscience recommend this to my Chinese students or anyone learning Chinese, for that matter. Despite emailing them with a thorough bug report, they didnt seem to take the mistakes seriously. Its now been over half a year since any updates to the app have been made. Its a shame, because with more attention to detail and a better customer orientation, this could actually be a decent app. 只能在此表示遗憾。
The thing that always amazes me about most of these Chinese learning programs is that none of them ever have detailed instructions as to how to use them. This program is the worse when it comes to this. I still cant even figure out how to write a character or to just type in a simple english word for that matter. I can only type in one letter at a time... A lot good that does me ???????......What a total waste of money....and the worst part is that when you go their website its just as bad because they tell you this program can do this and that but they dont explain how to use it step by step......
It could potentially be a great Ap, but the program lacks manual :-/ How do you skip such a large basic tool?!
I couldnt figure out how to get it to teach me stuff. I started with the grade 1-6 flashcards, right from the beginning. Having that seems like a grade idea. Unfortunately, I cant figure out what to do to move on to the next character - sometimes it does it for mr, and sometimes it doesnt,
Tell seems to have great feature but a horrible platform to navigate ... Please fix and instruction on how to use this program! $7 for an app that you cant navigate!!! Should be $2
I bought this app and could not download the app because it required the newest ios version, my ipod has the newest version.... I went to their website to contact them but their email link doesnt appear to work.... If I ever get the app downloaded I will write a review of the actual material....if there actually is material to view....