Thx! All the ones I’m seeing are Android 9 (latest is 14)… Do you run into any app compatibility issues with it? (Like not supported bc it’s too old sorta thing)
I haven’t so far. I have Kindle, audible, jidoujisho (the reader app I use) and PV viewer running just fine on it. I literally do not care about anything else, so ymmv.
I went with it over a newer one since it’s lighter and a better form factor for reading. Plus cheap bc old.
Good to know, thx! I’ve tried jidoujisho on the phone b4, but it felt a bit too obstructive. Curious to how it feels on tablet. Would certainly be worlds better than the Kindle app dictionary.
I’d much prefer reading on Kindle. Especially because of Kindle unlimited books. But I can’t give up jmdict and the superior word parsing. But I’m hoping when I’m more fluent I won’t be so dependent on what dictionary I have for lookups…
I just realized I was thinking of Kaku Dictionary (OCR). I
I gave it a try on ひげひろ and SAO 12, and the lookup seems pretty solid. The app has some rather aggravating UI, but I may have to utilize this more in the future. Can’t seem to get a monolingual dictionary to work tho
When I tried Kindle Paperwhite, it was terrible for manga, and abysmally slow, so seemed pointless for LNs too. Lately I’ve been reading LNs on the Kindle app, bc I can keep track of number of lookups via highlighting. If the built-in dictionary can’t catch it, I can type or Lens it into my phone (which I do for manga).
Fire HD 10 came. In terms of performance and visual, it’s good - much better than my Fire 7. But Physically I found it really uncomfortable. 10 inches is too big for me, and it is indeed really top heavy, unlike the Fire 7, which is really comfortable to hold and type on.
Decided to return it and order a used Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.4". Will post impressions when it gets here. It looks like Mihon requires min Android 8 - so I’ll be safe for now w/ Android 9
While Paperwhite isn’t good for manga, it’s pretty fantastic for LNs and other novels. It’s much better for lookups compared to the kindle app on other devices since it actually handles conjugations properly.
Mm, maybe I just had bad luck with the slowness or something (it was way worse than my Fire 7). I’ve read that about the dictionary being better… Wish I had a way to actually see the difference in action.
Maybe I’ll consider one next year or something… Tho by then hopefully my vocab will be good enough that the builtin dictionary won’t be that relevant.
I definitely had occasional slowness on my previous model, but no issues on the latest model.
I wish you luck on that journey. I still rely on the dictionary way too much.
Don’t we all
I’ll say this: it does feel easier to acquire vocab than it did a year ago…
Anyway good luck to us both!
So the Galaxy Tab A 8.4" came today. While I miss Android 13, this is soooooo much better than the Fire 7. The performance is decent, the display is excellent - very crisp, great for video and reading! Manga & LNs use the majority of the available screen space, certainly more than the Fire 7 did.
Cons: It does weigh slightly more, and feels slightly more top heavy compared to Fire 7 (not as much as the Fire 10 did tho). There is no system dark mode apps seem to crash occasionally (this may be a me doing too much at once sorta thing). Can’t make in-app Kindle purchases.
Overall, I think it’s a great choice, and am quite happy with it
Yay, I’m happy you like it. I was a little hesitant recommending it because there are some clear downsides, but so far it’s been a really good investment for my digital reading.
This is a little OT but I’ve been reading on paper lately and I’ve been enjoying it but looking up words is painful so I mostly skip them. But this morning I pulled out my kindle to see if I’ve misremembered how badly the dictionary lookup works and I wasn’t wrong, it is terrible. If I long press on, say, ありませんでした all it highlights is あり。
what am I doing wrong?
You can install this (as long as you’re ok with English definitions).
I think it has a better parser for verbs. It’s not as good as ttsu + yomichan but it’s a lot better than the default Kindle dictionary and makes lookups bearable.
Even with that (which I use), Kindle tends to highlight to the Japanese grammar conjugation rather than the one often used by English learners. For ます-stem cases (like あり) this can result in the stem (usually noun) definition itself being shown instead of the verb. Or in other cases like て-form of godan verbs it will only highlight up to the small っ (when applicable), which for compound verbs and phrases tends to make it find nothing until you force it to highlight the final て. It can be quite frustrating, but I’ve never found a way to improve this.
I wonder if part of the problem is the age of my kindle? I think its 10 years old. Maybe the highlighting function just doesn’t work properly?
Hmmm… a bit more googling reveals we are not the only ones complaining about this. Guess I’ll just have to put up with it.
I’ll give it a go but I just installed these dictionaries which are supposed to deconjugate and it made no difference.
That’s a bummer.
I mostly only read books on my kindle when I already know I won’t have a lot of lookups because it’s a hassle. It’s annoying that there’s way better software available but you’re stuck with what Amazon provides.
But that’s what deconjugation is: to look up あり and, apart from the insect, also find the verb ある. Or is it that they don’t find ある that is the problem? I think in fact that it doesn‘t matter what is highlighted, as long as the dict finds the correct word.
No it doesn’t find ある