Macworld Forums: Studying Japanese with iPhone/iPod Touch - Macworld Forums

I've just begun my japanese studies in Japan and everyone is buying these awful electronic dictionaries for learning. Basically they are like small computers that translate words and often have hand-writing recognition to input the kanji, the chinese characters. The thing is, it seems like there are a couple of very powerful and competent applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch that can pretty much do the same things, but in a neater package. (after all, it's Apple y'know!)

Does anyone have any experience of the applications such as KanjiFlip, Japanese, ShinKanji and the other amazing-looking apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Can they be as useful, or even more useful, as an electronic dictionary?

The thing is, I kind of dislike most electronic dictionaries. They look and feel very clumsy and do not seem very smart at all.