Our newest Chinese dictionary and flashcard tool for Palm OS and Windows Mobile handhelds and smartphones.
(new features in 2.0 are highlighted in red)
Great Dictionaries - we've licensed seven of the world's best Chinese dictionaries to embed in our software, including the ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary edited by John DeFrancis (with almost 200,000 entries), the Oxford Concise English & Chinese Dictionary, the Chinese-Chinese Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian, the 280,000-entry 21st Century English-Chinese Dictionary, and the new Tuttle Learner's Chinese-English Dictionary.
Handwriting Recognition - simply write in an unknown character to instantly look up its Pinyin and meaning; unlike most other Chinese handwriting recognizers, ours will let you take as long as you like to draw a character and can deal with less-than-perfect stroke order. It also supports cursive writing, helpful for more advanced users (or for asking people to write down what they're saying when you can't understand them).
Powerful Search - search for words by characters, Pinyin (with or without tones), or a mix, with support for wildcards and for full-text search to find words appearing anywhere in a dictionary definition.
Flashcard System - create a card from any dictionary entry with a single button tap, import premade word lists, automatically optimize which cards come up the most often based on how well you remember them, and test vocabulary in a variety of ways including multiple-choice tests and tone drills.
Audio Pronunciation - instantly hear a native-speaker audio recording of each Chinese headword; recordings are available for over 34,000 words, and work in flashcards as well as in the main dictionary.
Stroke Order Diagrams - view animations of how to draw each character (over 15,000 characters are covered), and test yourself on the correct stroke order in flashcards.
Document Reader - open a Chinese-language text file and look up unknown words simply by tapping on them.
Self-contained - includes its own Chinese font system, so it works on even an English-language handheld or smartphone without any additional software.
Taiwan- and Mainland-friendly - supports both traditional and simplified characters (in dictionary definitions, flashcards, stroke order diagrams, searches, and the handwriting recognizer), and supports Zhuyin as well as Pinyin for headword search and display.
Instant Access - (now on Windows Mobile as well as Palm OS) - highlight a word in another application on your handheld / smartphone and instantly look it up in Pleco, making it easy to translate SMSes and other Chinese text.
Pleco is designed to run on a wide range of handheld computers and smartphones. If you're buying a new device to run Pleco on, see this page for some recommendations.
Windows Mobile: Pleco 2.0 should run on any touchscreen-equipped Windows Mobile handheld / smartphone running Windows Mobile 2003 or later, including the HTC Touch series of smartphones and the HP iPAQ 110/210 series of handhelds. It won't work on earlier versions of Windows Mobile (Pocket PC 2002) or on devices without touchscreens like the Samsung Blackjack and Motorola Q.
Palm OS: Pleco 2.0 should run on any Palm OS handheld running Palm OS 5.2 or later that has a memory expansion card slot, including the Treo 600/700 series and Centro smartphones and the Palm TX. In spite of having keyboards, all of the Palm OS Treo / Centro models also include touchscreens, so Pleco's handwriting recognizer should work just fine on them.
Other Platforms: An iPhone / iPod Touch version of Pleco is in development, but we're not yet ready to announce a release date for it, nor do we have any information about features / pricing / upgrade policies on iPhone.
Desktop Computers: A desktop version of Pleco for Windows and Mac OS is also in the works, though again we're not ready to announce a release date, features, or pricing / upgrade policies for it yet.
For customers who purchased PlecoDict 1.0 prior to the release of Pleco 2.0, 2.0 is a (mostly) free upgrade; you may need to pay to add on some of the new features (stroke order / audio / new dictionaries), and if you bought our old Oxford Dict software many years ago and haven't bought any upgrades since then you'll need to buy the Hanwang Handwriting Recognizer upgrade in order to continue using handwriting recognition in 2.0, but the basic software upgrade is free.
See the 2.0 upgrade guide for details on how to download/install your free upgrade.