Google Nexus One Language Support

Considering Google has probably the best online translation site, and the Google Search interface is localized in well over 100 languages, I was thinking the Nexus might have particularly good language support. However it turns out to be much more limited than the iPhone. The tech specs say

Display: English (U.S), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Korean, Japanese, Russian

Keyboard: English (U.S), French (France), German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil)

iPhone/iPod Touch: Useful Language Apps

A key feature of the iPhone/iPod Touch is the ability to draw Chinese and Japanese characters on its screen. I don't know how useful this is for creating text, but it is an invaluable replacement for radical/stroke analysis when looking up these characters in a dictionary. For Japanese I am using the app Kotoba and for Chinese DianHua.

Other language apps I've found so far that seem especially useful or high quality are the mobile version of Google Translate, the Larousse Dictionnaire de Français, the Classic Greek dictionary Lexiphanes, and the Latin dictionary Lexidium.

Additional suggestions by readers are most welcome.

Expanded Unicode Input on iPhone/iPod Touch

I've been looking for a way to generate any Unicode character on an iPhone or iPod Touch but have not found an app yet which does this. I tried a variety of charts and virtual keyboards reachable via Safari, and the best one seems to be

Macchiato's Character Picker

You can adjust the page size and save it to one of the app screens, and then select the character range that appears on the virtual keys and input them into the text box at the top. Unfortunately the device keyboard pops up after every entry, but you can dismiss that. In order to copy/paste the result you have created, you must let the Apple keyboard remain after inputting your last character.

(12/15) The iPhone/iPod Touch app Unicode Table now has a copy/paste function for individual characters which is easier than using the website mentioned above.

iPhone 3.0 Software Adds Languages

In today's presention regarding the next version of iPhone software, which is supposed to be released sometime this summer, Apple indicated that it will include new languages and keyboards.

Unfortunately I have not found any info yet about which ones (though I would expect at least Arabic/Hebrew, Greek, and Thai might be among them). If anyone has details, let me know.

PS As of 3/25 I have seen online photos or other reports indicating new keyboards are available for Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, and Thai.

PSS Apple issued the tech specs for the iPhone with 3.0 software on 6/8/2009. It confirms UI, keyboard, and predictive dictionaries for Arabic, Thai, Greek, and Hebrew.

PSSS When made available 6/18/09, 3.0 has off/on switches for two keyboards not mentioned in the tech specs, Bulgarian and Macedonian. But these keyboards do not work.

Bug in iPhone/iPod Chinese Handwriting Input

The Chinese handwriting input on the latest iPhone/iPod Touch is a pretty impressive feature. But when using the Simplified Chinese version of this, you may find that only 4 character choices are given, so that if none is correct you have to start over. If you switch to the Traditional Chinese version, you will find a button over at the left which says 其他. Tapping this will give you additional sets of 4 choices, where you will probably find the correct one.

The lack of the 其他 button for Simplified Chinese is presumably a bug which Apple will need to fix.