this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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They were a bigger deal. I started learning Japanese when the first Iphone came out and spent quite some time in Japan when the Android phones were a new thing. Internet on the phones was very limited.
Dictionaries existed on the phones, but the usability was non-existent. Even worse if you had to look for a word you didn't know how to read.
The electronic dictionaries had great writing detection and cross-referencing between language and informational dictionaries etc. At the time they were awesome. One electronic dictionary could contain dozens of dictionaries of various topics, which probably was convenient for Japanese themselves (and not just language learners).
Of course nowadays you can do the same on a phone, but there was a period when you couldn't.