This has been a great tool already with just a couple of days. I’m using this for foundational learning as well as practice but I don’t always have my soroban with me. I do think there are some typos that make it sometimes a hair confusing (top/upper number) I’m pretty sure means leftmost number. I’d love to help clean up some typos if you guys are interested! It would be an awesome way for me to learn as well since I’d probably be reading most of the copy used in this app. Anyways thanks for the app and I’ll continue learning! Looking forward to mastering this skill and improving my brain game!Apparently I never hit send but I have some additions anyway! Still love this app but when I’m practicing, the layout has a black bar that grows with the soroban. I’d rather that black bar be on top because I keep pulling the Notification Center down instead of pulling down the 5 bead. Please remove the black bar or move it up too where it will actually be more of a feature than a hinderance lol.

The original app only worked in portrait mode, so I gave it three stars. This new version works in landscape, which makes more sense for an abacus. Also, they added instructions on finger technique. Speeding up the finger work helps you to avoid overthinking, and recognize the patterns rather than trying to do the math in your head and make the beads agree. I’ve found that the quicker I work the beads, the better I do on the tests.Great app! I just upgraded to the paid version ($5.99). Well worth it! (Now I just need to find a real abacus.)

Lessons 1-6 are simple steps adding one complication at a time. Lesson 7 is a big jump going from 1 digit to two digit addition and subtraction. Adding 10’s complement work to the already practiced 5’s complement work and then expecting a neophyte to keep track of both at the same time. And on top of that making the problems multi step involving 5 transactions at once. Successfully completing lesson 6 does not prepare one for lesson 7. I think lesson 7 should be broken into at least 3 separate lessons. Additionally, waiting until one has done 5 problems before finding out if one is correct is not helpful. I would learn faster if I knew the quality of my work immediately so I could immediately repeat the work and find my problem. Being able to repeat the same problem repeatedly would increase the speed at which I could learn the patterns.

The practices build on each other nicely, but this was clearly not written in English originally. The translation is rough, almost to the point of unusability: I would only recommend it to people who are comfortable with math already, or who will have someone with them that is comfortable and can figure out the meaning (if you already know the destination, it makes it easier to decipher unclear directions). The timed practices could also use a reset button - if you lose your place you’re not getting back to the starting conditions on your own and you just have to scrap the whole thing