I am an intermediate to advanced learner of Japanese. I do not recommend this application for a learner of Japanese. I bought it because I wanted natural sounding examples. There are plenty, but not always for the Japanese word you search for. You just get a couple English equivalents, then a bunch of natural examples for those equivalents and their Japanese translations, and these do not necessarily include the original Japanese word you looked up.
UPDATE: I wrote to the developer of this application, and I must say that they were very responsive to my concerns. They pointed out that this application is really geared toward a native Japanese speaker, and not to a Japanese language learner, and they said they would look over the application description to see that this is made more clear. Meanwhile, I can say the developer seems very responsive to customer feedback, and that bodes well for the developer's other apps. And of course for this one, which does look helpful for a native Japanese speaker learning English.
UPDATE (Nov. 1): One irritating thing about this app is it doesn't seem to update through iTunes. The updates only seem to show up on my iOS devices.
The translations are much more natural and current than the dictionaries by Japanese publishers. Longman does it again!
good, but still needs improvement.
This is a fantastic Japanese- English dictionary. i can honestly say this is the best one that is on the App store for sure! However, it still needs some improvement. the first thing i'd like to see changed is that if you are looking up a word, that it speak the Japanese version of the word, not the english word. (Ie: you look up "sad" and when you press the 'sound' button it says "sad" in english, and not the "sabishii" for the japanese word.) The other thing i'd like to see changed is have the reading for the kanji that it gives so that way for those of us still learning the language, we can actually read the kanji that it gives to make sure we are saying the right thing. If those two things were to change, this would have 5 stars for sure from me! but until it does, it'll have to settle for 4 stars.
Good
I'm a native Japanese and this is good enough to look up words. Never used longman for learning english before but so far so good.
Very clear and useful
Examples are so good. Unlike my Japanese phe dictionary, which has ridiculous examples!!!
Great for Japanese speakers and Intermediate to Advanced Students
Don't get this if you're a beginner, but it's great for people that have been studying for years. It fills in some of the weaker points of other dictionaries by providing words like "a priori" and "G-8". Great index and easy to use search. Audio quality is 4 out of 5 for an app.
Not impressed
I am not that impressed by this dictionary considering its price. First, it is a bit slow but I suppose that is understandable since its a phone. But more importantly its easier to use as an Japanese -> English dictionary than the other way around. The example, you can search in both English and Japanese but pronunciations are only for the English translation and not for Japanese. I find this disappointing. I would like the option to strip off the English pronunciation to save space and the option to add pronunciation for the Japanese words - though I suppose this is less critical since Japanese is a phonetic language unlike Japanese!
