MOT Mobile Dictionary for Smartphones: Review

Besides seafood-lovers, travelers, businesspeople, students, and writers frequently encounter words that they don't know, or can't be sure what exactly they might mean. With access to a computer, it is possible to look up the word from a PC dictionary, or search the Internet for the definition. But thanks to mobile phones and laptop computers, we are spending less time staring at the computer monitor and more time somewhere else, holding our smart (camera music satellite navigation camcorder) phones.

In addition to searching for specific words, we often need to convert centimeters to inches, yards to meters and kilograms to ounces. When we are working on a PC, it would be easy to access any of the number of online services that can calculate the correct values for us. Yet, we tend to pick up a phone, launch the Converter application (can be found in the Office folder on many S60 phones) and use it to calculate converted values for us.

Even though carrying a full dictionary on a small smartphone requires storage space, the whole thing takes considerably less space than a paper copy of a dictionary. The MOT Mobile databases and search program can be installed on the phone's internal memory or on a memory card. The advantage of having everything on the phone is that when you want to access the dictionary, you can do it anywhere because all the required information is already there. Absolutely no connections to any servers or to the Internet are required.

We recommend that you install the product on a phone that has a memory card slot, and purchase a 512MB, or larger card where you install the program. The MOT software is compatible with Symbian OS/S60 phones, Symbian OS/S80 communicators, and with Windows Mobile 2002, 2003 or 2003 Second Edition devices. We tried the product on a S60 smartphone.

Using the MOT Mobile Dictionary

The product is delivered on a CD. This means that a PC must be used to install the software to the phone. When launched, the setup program extracts the installation files from the CD and saves them on the PC's hard drive. We copied the SIS files (Symbian OS installation files) to a memory card that we inserted into the phone. Using the File Manager application on the phone, we opened every SIS file and installed the application and databases to the memory card.

During the installation process, we had to enter a long registration key twice; once on the PC and once on the phone. The installation process was troublesome and can be too much of an effort for anyone who is not used to tweaking computers or smartphones.

Simulating a real-life situation, it took us 26 seconds to pull our smartphone out from the pocket, launch the program, and find the right word in the dictionary. Most of the time went into typing the foreign language word (Pesce Spada) on the numeric keypad. When we searched a word from the Internet, it took us 3 minutes 15 seconds (including launch of the browser, selecting one of the bookmarks avecmobile.com/links on our phone, clicking the link that led to the References-section, going to the LangtoLang online dictionary, specifying Italian and English as the languages and typing the word we were looking for).

The MOT Mobile can be purchased directly from Kielikone, the company that has developed the product.

Value for the money: 4 out of 5

The MOT Mobile is good value for anyone who frequently needs to check exact meaning of foreign words. A printed copy of a dictionary has its price and so does the MOT Mobile dictionary. But if you have it on your phone, you never have to take the risk of guessing words because this dictionary follows you everywhere you go.

Still don't know what Pesce Spada is? According to the MOT Mobile dictionary, it is Sword Fish. Yum.