An app that can't phone home

Tong Learn listens to your conversations and looks through your camera. That's a lot to ask of anyone's trust. So instead of promising not to send your data anywhere, we made it impossible: the app doesn't ask Android for internet access at all.

Everything runs on the phone

Speech recognition, translation with a 1.5B-parameter language model, text-to-speech and camera text reading all run on the device. There's no account, no analytics and no ads. Conversations, saved phrases and learning progress stay in the app's private storage.

Offline is also the feature

Tong Learn is built for travellers in mainland China and Hong Kong, where many online translators don't work or can't download their offline models. An app that never needs a connection works in the subway, in the countryside and behind any firewall.

What it costs

• Size. The offline language pack is about 1.3 GB. On Google Play it arrives as an asset pack right after install, so the app itself never needs the network.
• No crash reports. Without internet there's no automatic telemetry. Bug reports are a file the user chooses to send.
• Phone requirements. Running these models locally needs a reasonably modern 64-bit Android phone.

Worth it

For an app that hears your voice and sees what you see, "can't" is a much stronger promise than "won't". Read the full Tong Learn privacy policy.