Blink! Pro - Voice and Photo Recognition & Translator app for iPhone and iPad

4.4 ( 1584 ratings )

Travel Productivity
Developer: Ideaslab.com Inc.

4.99 USD

Current version: 4.1, last update: 7 years ago
First release : 02 Nov 2011
App size: 312.32 Mb

All-in-One:
1. Translator
2. OCR Scanner
3. Dictionary
4. Voice recognizer

Includes unlimited voice & speech recognition. Your multilingual voice translator.

The Swiss Army knife of all translators. Speak into the iPhone in a language and have it spoken back to you in another language. Take a picture of any sign, text, or menu (brightly lit with clear text) in a foreign language while translating it into a language that you can understand.

Now you can understand those French menus in France, those Chinese signs hanging on the Chinese restaurant walls, or simply take notes by taking a picture of a magazine page.

Text recognition uses OCR running on your iPhone/iPad/iPod which can be saved into your notes. Unable to take a picture for some reason? Use Apples foreign keyboard or try to draw the character with your fingers for instant translation.

Translate text into any of the supported languages. Save text to email, photo album or copy to notes.

How can you use Blink!?
‣ Picture and Document OCR scanner. Take pictures of text from newspapers, magazines, or signs and extract the text..
‣ Multilingual assistant. Having problems in a foreign country where a person doesnt speak the same language? Hold the phone between yourselves and use it as your bilingual translator assistant.
‣ Pocket companion translator for travelers. Requires 3G or WIFI.
‣ Those who want to learn a new language.
‣ Picture straightener. For images taken on an angle resulting in a distorted image, use the perspective tool to straighten out the image.

What is Blink! for?

1. Voice recognition
‣ 17 languages recognized using voice with Nuance daily transactions. Voice recognition include English, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish.
‣ 17 languages recognized using voice with Unlimited voice transactions(included). Voice recognition include English, Arabic, Mandarin, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish.

Other voice recognition apps are priced $2.99 to $9.99 and usually recognizes preset phrases.

2. Translation
‣ Translate between 36 different language pairs.
Languages include Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malaysian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

3. OCR - Optical Character Recognition
‣ Recognize text among 36 different languages listed above.
‣ Perspective correction for photos taken on an angle or slant.

4. Dictionary
‣ Free downloadable dictionaries which provide a word to word translation and lookup.

Other apps sell each of the 4 features above individually for $4.99-$9.99, but this is the only app which fully integrate both voice, speech and image recognition into one platform.

Pros and cons of Blink! Pro - Voice and Photo Recognition & Translator app for iPhone and iPad

Blink! Pro - Voice and Photo Recognition & Translator app good for

Ive been waiting for an app like this for over a month now. And it walked into my business "literally" the other day. I highly recommend this app for anyone who is in a sales oriented position. Communication is key, and this app closes that barrier. Well done!! The photo recognition is awesome too! Dont question it!!! Just get it and start using it immediately.

Kudos! Just give me unfettered access to all translation capabilities for a fixed price and no nonsense. Thats what I get. Good move with the choice of translation services, most just use one, google translate. Nice having a basic dictionary on the go in case network connectivity not available. Please do not move to a subscription model. I like the fixed price and all-you-can-consume feature!

Finally I found it!! Ive been searching an app like this for longtime. This app is very easy to use and the photo recognition is really fun and great!! Dont waste your time anymore for searching other app, just download this!! Its simply Awesome!!

Pros: 3 types of recognition combined into one. Including photo, voice and text recognition. Other apps require subscription fees. Only app found to support photo, voice recognition and speech output. Cons: The photo recognition is hit or miss and requires good lighting. Upon reentering the app, it defaults to English. Giving 4 stars because of the value it provides and doesnt require any in-app purchases or subscriptions. One time purchase only.

Some bad moments

When it isnt crashing it sometimes works. When it works the translation is ok. I keep getting a message "youre not authorized to use the service. Please contact your service provider." The voice translation works a few time, maybe 5, and then this message starts coming up and then its done. Will try again tomorrow to see if its a daily limit but so far very disappointed. Update : still doesnt work. App is likely a scam. My guess is it uses a demo license for Nuance voice services and once you test it a few times you are locked out. Developer description says unlimited translating. 5 translations is not unlimited.

Character recognition for Japanese text is hit or miss and mostly miss. Also, it doesnt seem to allow the user to select a preferred language for character recognition and leave it on that setting. It constantly defaults to English, so you have to manually set it each time before snapping a picture.

Waste of time and money. Can only translate a few words at a time. Cant translate an entire page or paragraph of a document

I bought this to use with Japanese text translation, and its a big failure in that arena. I took a CLEAR photo of one sentence, which contained 4 numbers, 2 kanji, 3 hiragana, and 10 katakana. All it did was convert the 2 kanji into a Chinese equivalent, and everything else was left as is, no English whatsoever. If an OCS translator cant even handle simple kana, then its useless. The settings also have to be reset every time you open the app, which is ponderous, and the app loves to crash when connecting to the iTunes Store, while processing a photo, or just any old time. Avoid.

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