Needs some work, good potential – Collins Spanish-English Review

Update: Lately, the biggest annoyance is that the app always opens to the last entry or screen it was in when last closed. This would be much better as an option. It would make tons of sense to also have the option to have the app open to a blank search screen, ready to type in a word. It is extreeeeemely tedious when going back and forth between another app and this one to always have to wait for the app to open to its last state and then navigate to the search screen and then clear and then enter.... Most often dictionaries are opened to quickly look up a new or different word. Besides, the history screen does a pretty good job of recording the last entry viewed, and so on. --------------- History list is less buggy, but after a while, I still get duplicated entries on occasion, and sometimes random entries will not display the translation direction, but will again at a later time. Hey, how about manual bookmarking like other Ultralingua language apps I've seen in the app store? There's another star right there. ------------ OK, so I've discovered it IS possible to use text copy with the content. You have to tap and hold (and drag to position) from blank spaces or in the side margins, or something. You can get a resizable selection rectangle, or the standard selection "pins" (watch for the magnifier). It can be a pain, but it can be done. ----------- Factoring in the price tag, I can't offer more than three stars at this time. Some content is suspect/erroneous (see other reviews), although generally content is fairly clear and rather comprehensive. There ARE a lot of phrase examples, which is nice, buton occasion are written in ways I've never heard anyone speak, American or British, which makes one suspect the quality of all the translations. Maybe this is characteristic of translation dictionaries in general? Some searches yield no results even though the word appears as a subentry, in particular reflexive verb forms. Absolutlely no manual bookmarking capability like some of their other language products. Updates were VERY FEW and VERY FAR between, but lately there have been a couple with minor tweaks. No key or legend to explain dictionary abbreviations, etc., though most can be figured out in context. But WTF is the asterisk * for, found in some entries? The world may never know. Clumsy, slow method of navigating verb tenses (button + popup screen to select). It would be very useful to have arrow buttons and/or swiping to quickly move through tenses without leaving the conjugation screen. The number translation feature is great, though. At this price, this app is a little minimalistic in terms of user interface and functionality. But forget audio pronunciations. It's Spanish, for gosh sakes. There are FAR more important enhancements needed without adding a hundred megabytes. All said and done, sure, it's still probably better than a Franklin electronic dictionary.
Review by Steven Zyler on Collins Spanish-English.