Chinese Trainer on Android: the commute habit

You do not pass the HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) with one long Saturday. Vocabulary forgetting is predictable: without interval review, new words evaporate in days. Cepeda and colleagues measured this in Psychological Bulletin (2006), on verbal recall tasks. The gap between sessions predicts retention better than stacking the same block on the same day. The paper is at doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354 and on PubMed. Do not invent a memory percentage from that study. The useful takeaway is qualitative: spacing beats the binge.

In practice it looks like this. For example: you learn 你好 (nǐ hǎo, hello) on Monday at a laptop. Wednesday, the system should show it again. Wednesday you are standing on a train. If the only place to answer is a Chrome tab on a desk, that card never gets seen. By Friday it is no longer “a gap”. It is a pile of due cards that feels like work.

The phone does not make you speak Chinese. It puts the deck in the hand that is already holding a screen. That is less glamorous and more useful than another app that promises immersion while you commute.

Chinese Trainer started as a web app because serious study still fits a keyboard and headphones. Android does not replace that session. It covers the hole people quit through: the workday, the commute, five minutes before sleep.

If you want the full clock (eight minutes of SRS, then listening, output, tones), that is the 20-minute routine. This post is the version that fits a pocket when those 20 minutes will not exist.

On Android you open the same Chinese Trainer. There is no “lite mode” that strips audio or leaves you with pinyin only. The plan, the deck, and the HSK level belong to your account.

Three things change in form, not in syllabus:

A tap replaces the keyboard for flipping a card. That speeds SRS. It does not replace writing 谢谢 (xièxie, thank you) when writing practice is due.

Audio comes through the phone speaker or commute headphones. Short listening (one sentence, not a podcast) is what fits here. A 40-minute mock still wants a desk and quiet.

Notifications only help if they open the due deck. If they exist to feed an empty streak, you are buying dopamine. Chinese Trainer will not congratulate you for opening the app and leaving.

What does not change: the syllabus still follows the official exam. The institutional frame for Chinese as a language sits at chinese.cn. We do not issue the HSK. We train the vocabulary and skills the paper asks for.

The product limit does not change either. We are not a pocket dictionary in the Pleco sense. There is no live teacher inside the APK. Voice tutor, when you use it, is the same system as the web: useful for output, not a native speaker on the other end. If the model is wrong, the app says so. Correct it and continue.

For lists and levels, use HSK vocabulary and the HSK guides. The phone does not invent a second syllabus.

Three taps. You do not need a second account.

• Install from Google Play or from the branded page chinesetrainer.com/android. The technical Android package name is com.chinofacil.app. That id cannot change after publish. The name you see is Chinese Trainer. The branded URL is the one to save and share.
• Sign in with the same Google account you use on the web. If you start a “phone only” account, you will have two progress tracks and like neither. Sign-in is at login.
• Open today’s plan and clear the due deck before you touch new words. If the queue has 40 cards, do not start an HSK 3 topic “because you have an app now”. Close due cards. Then, if time remains, a short batch of new ones.

If you do not have an account yet, create it on the web or on the phone: order does not matter. HSK 1 and 2 sit on the free plan. Do not pay in order to “try Android”. Installing does not unlock Standard.

One store detail that confuses people: Play Store shows the package name in the URL. That is not the brand name. When we published Android, the identifier stayed com.chinofacil.app: Google does not let you change it after publish. If someone sends you only that code, send the /android page. The install button and the explanation live there.

Five minutes are not a class. They are the interval Cepeda would tell you not to skip.

Do this, in this order, then leave:

• Open the app. Do not open WhatsApp “for a second”. The due deck comes first.
• Answer out loud when you can. 我要复习 (wǒ yào fùxí, I want to review) said quietly on a platform beats tapping “I know” in silence. If the carriage will not let you speak, move your lips. Tone is part of the card, not an extra.
• If a card fails twice, do not mark it right out of embarrassment. SRS only works if you lie to it rarely. A 好 (hǎo, good / fine) with the wrong tone is a miss. See it again tomorrow.
• When your stop comes, close. Do not do “one more” if you are already late. The habit that survives is the one that does not fight the platform. The long session, if today has one, is still the 20 minutes at a desk.

What not to do in those five minutes: do not install another Chinese app “just in case”. Do not switch HSK lists. Do not open the tutor for a tourist chat. That is a different block. On a commute, the phone is the SRS queue and, if a minute remains, one short audio at the same level.

If your day does have a desk, do not replace the 20 minutes with five on the phone and call yourself consistent. The phone covers the hole. It is not the full plan. The method map is in how to learn Chinese.

Installing Chinese Trainer is free. The free plan covers HSK 1 and 2: lists, SRS, listening, and writing in that band. That is true on web and on Android.

Standard and Premium are the same plans as in the browser. There is no cheaper “Play Store pack” and no extra that exists only in the APK. If you are free on the web, you are free on the phone. If you pay for Standard, the phone inherits it with the account.

Do not install Android hoping the paywall disappears. Do not skip the install because “you are not paying yet”. The HSK 1–2 band is the right place to see whether the habit lasts two weeks. If you will not open the deck on the phone, a paid plan will not open it for you.

The exam is paid on chinesetest.cn, not here. We do not sell the registration or the score.

iOS is not on the App Store yet. If you study on an iPhone, open chinesetrainer.com in Safari and sign in with the same account. The layout works on a small screen. It is not as fast as the Android APK for flipping cards. It is enough not to lose the day.

When iOS ships, progress will follow the account, not the operating system. You will not “start from zero on iPhone”.

What we will not promise, on Play or on the web:

We will not promise spoken Chinese in 30 days. The HSK 1 that chinesetest.cn describes is about 150 words. That is not conversation.

We will not promise that five minutes a day is enough for HSK 4. The phone prevents quitting. The vocabulary load of HSK 3 and 4 still takes weeks, not a widget.

We will not promise the tutor model is always right. Use it to produce sentences. Check hanzi and tones when the sentence matters.

Chinese Trainer is an indie project. Public Android is the version you can install, not a closed experiment. If something breaks on a phone model, the useful channel is web support, not a one-star review the same day.

If you already have an account, install from Google Play or from /android, sign in with Google, and clear the due cards. If you do not have an account, create one, stay on free HSK 1–2, and use the phone so Wednesday does not get skipped.

That is the only CTA. The rest (Standard, mocks, tutor) can wait until the commute deck stops being optional.