Dictamus 7.0.2 will fix a number of smaller bugs such as the disabled Back button in the Download view or the hangs that sometimes occur at the start or end of a dictation upload. 7.0.2 is already under review at Apple and should be available soon.

Dictamus saves dictations in both compressed and uncompressed format. Your sharing destination settings and the network availability at upload time determine which format is sent. Uncompressed format is WAV linear PCM, 16 bit, mono, 11.025 kHz. Compressed is WAV IMA4 ADPCM, 16 bit, mono, 11.025 kHz.

One minute of audio in uncompressed 11025/1/16 format is exactly 1,323,000 bytes, or 1.26 MB. Compressed audio takes up approx. 0.33 MB per minute.

Apple doesn't ship any audio encoder components with iOS, so we would have to license and implement any audio compression format ourselves. We want to maintain high compatibility with existing software and hardware, so we would only use widely used audio formats, i.e. MP3, AAC or DSS. It is no easy task to implement any of those, and the licensing costs are unaffordably high. An MP3 license, for example, incurs an annual minimum fee of US$15,000 and US$2.50 per shipped unit at the time of writing (see mp3licensing.com for details). A DSS license for an iPhone application can only be obtained for a six-figure (!) initial fee. (This information is not guaranteed to be current and accurate, errors to be expected.)

Please send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it in English or German language. We kindly ask for your understanding that we cannot reply to inquiries in other languages. If you submit a bug report, please submit screenshots that help us to understand and reproduce the problem (see below).

Press the Home button (below the screen, on the front) and the Lock button (on top, near the SIM tray and the headphone jack) at the same time. Your screen will flash and you'll hear a shutter sound. You can then either transfer the photos to your computer and send them from there, or send them directly from your iPhone in the Photos application.

The stuttering or skipping problem is a known, but infrequent phenomenon. We haven't seen this in our testing cycles for over a year now. The problem appears to occur whenever an older device (iPhone original, iPhone 3G, iPod Touch 2nd gen.) is heavily processing background tasks. Unfortunately, in those situations, we get the recorded audio delivered in garbled form already by Apple's audio components, so there's not much we can do about this. Background processing occurs mostly (but not only) when there's a low main memory condition. Main memory is not the memory you see in iTunes, therefore the occurrence of low memory conditions is completely unrelated to the amount of free space for music, photos etc. on the device. The only way to free up main memory is to restart the device. If you use such an older device, then we suggest that you restart your device once in a while in order to avoid low memory conditions. To restart the device, press and hold the power button (near the headphone jack) until a red slider labeled "Power off" appears. Release the button, slide the slider to the right and wait for the screen to go all black, which indicates that the device has powered off. Press and hold the power button for about two seconds until a silver Apple logo appears on your screen. The device is booting up, this usually takes about 20-30 seconds (sometimes longer).

There are many possible causes for connection errors. The most common is that one or more of your SMTP settings are incorrect. Double-check that you entered the correct SMTP server name and port (see next question). If you're on a Wi-Fi network and you use port 25, then your ISP might block port 25 connections in an effort to battle spam and botnets. Try port 587 instead.

Standard ports are 25, 465 and 587.

Dictamus will always use SSL/TLS encryption if the SMTP server supports it. You don't need to activate a special setting to enable it.

Your SMTP server might not allow authentication. Disable SMTP authentication in your Dictamus settings and try again.

See I have a feature request or a bug report. Who do I contact?