Hanzi Recognizer v2.0 Released

The latest version is now available in the Android Market. There are no new user visible features, but the  renewed UI and full support for tablets warrant the major version bump.

Hanzi Recognizer now has an app-wide action bar, available both on the newer Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) and Honeycomb (3.x) Android versions, and on all mainstream Android 2.x versions. Functions previously only accessible via the overflow menu are now easier to use and discover courtesy of the action bar. Here's a screenshot of the app's main screen:


The two icons on the right kick off the keyword (reading or meaning) search and the favorites/history screen, respectively. All other screens have a home icon on the left as well, providing an easy way to get to the main screen from anywhere. Less frequently used activities such as Settings and About are available via the Menu key, as before.

The favorites and history tabbed screen now has a new look, consistent with the Honeycomb and ICS visual style. Changing tabs is also easier: just swipe left or right to switch from favorites to history and vice versa. In addition, the filter and import/export actions are now available on action bar.


On tablets the app uses the larger screen estate to show more information and make browsing characters and compounds easier. Search results or recognition candidates (when not using search on stroke) are displayed on the left, and tapping an item will update the details pane on the right. Here's how the compounds search result screens look on a Honeycomb tablet:


Version 2.0 now requires Android 2.1. Since less than 2% of all installs are on the Android 1.6,  most users won't be affected by this new requirement. Hanzi Recognizer v1.7.2 is still available on the Android Market  for devices running earlier Android versions, but no new features are planned.

Other changes and improvement in version 2.0:
  • Reduced startup time
  • Better error handling and reporting
  • Various optimizations and bug fixes
Finally, the app now has an official Google+ page. Add it to your circles to get the latest news and updates and don't forget to +1 and share.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decrypting Android M adopted storage

Image
One of the new features Android M introduces is adoptable storage . This feature allows external storage devices such as SD cards or USB drives to be 'adopted' and used in the same manner as internal storage. What this means in practice is that both apps and their private data can be moved to the adopted storage device. In other words, this is another take on everyone's (except for widget authors...) favorite 2010 feature --  AppsOnSD . There are, of course, a few differences, the major one being that while AppsOnSD (just like app Android 4.1 app encryption ) creates per-app encrypted containers, adoptable storage encrypts the whole device. This short post will look at how adoptable storage encryption is implemented, and show how to decrypt and use adopted drives on any Linux machine. Adopting an USB drive In order to enable adoptable storage for devices connected via USB you need to execute the following command in the Android shell (presumably, this is not needed if your...
Read more

Unpacking Android backups

Image
One of the less known new features introduced in ICS is the ability to backup a device to a file on your computer via USB. All you have to do is enable USB debugging, connect your phone to a computer and type the adb backup command in a shell. That will show a confirmation dialog on the phone prompting you to authorize the backup and optionally specify a backup encryption password. It looks something like this: This doesn't require rooting your phone and lets you backup application data, both user installed and system applications (APK's), as well as shared storage (SD card) contents. There are some limitations though: it won't backup apps that have explicitly forbidden backups in their manifest, it won't backup protected (with DRM) apps and it won't backup some system settings such as APN's and WiFi access points. The transfer speed is limited by ADB channel speed (less than 1MB/s), so full backups can take quite some time. There is also a rather annoying...
Read more

Using app encryption in Jelly Bean

Image
The latest Android version, 4.1 (Jelly Bean) was announced last week at Google I/O  with a bunch of new features and improvements . One of the more interesting features is app encryption, but there haven't been any details besides the short announcement: 'From Jelly Bean and forward, paid apps in Google Play are encrypted with a device-specific key before they are delivered and stored on the device.'. The lack of details is of course giving rise to guesses and speculations, some people even fear that they will have to repurchase their paid apps when they get a new device. In this article we will look at how app encryption is implemented in the OS,  show how you can install encrypted apps without going through Google Play, and take a peak at how Google Play delivers encrypted apps. OS support for encrypted apps The previous version of this article was based on Eclipse framework source packages and binary system images, and was missing a few pieces. As Jelly Bean sour...
Read more