Buying a Samsung Galaxy S3 in the UK and compatibility in China

[anonymoose]

I have not owned a so-called smartphone before, and do not know an awful lot about them, so apologies if these are stupid questions, but...

If I buy an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S3 in the UK, will it be useable in China in terms of signal, and use of Chinese characters?

Amazon.co.uk is offering them currently for £375.22 (here). Is this a reasonable deal?

Anything else worth knowing before buying? Thanks for any advice.

[skylee]

Yes. Also consider the LTE (4G) version. I don't know if China has 4G networks but 4G is available in HK and other places. I use Galaxy Note 2 (LTE) which I think is great. But some people might find it too big.

In HK a Galaxy S3 (16GB) is sold at HKD4898, and getting a 3-5% discount is not difficult. So the UK price quoted above is not unreasonable I think.

[jiminchina]

not sure about how it works out with the network carriers, but for Chinese characters, it does not matter where you purchase the phone. If it can use Chinese characters in the UK then it will be able to do so in China too. I do not use a Galaxy, but I assume with any Smart phone Chinese characters can be used.

[大肚男]

I have an SIII and Google pinyin works perfectly on it

[Saxondale]

As long as it's unlocked, you won't having a problem using 移动／联通. If you want 3G service, you'll have to go with 联通. If for some reason your phone isn't unlocked, you'll be able to do this in China.

Using Chinese all depends on the software, not the place you purchase the phone. No need to worry about that, it'll have everything you need.

[anonymoose]

OK, thanks everyone. I think I've got it. I was just worried about whether it would have Chinese characters installed on it, but if I can just add them myself, then it should be no problem.

[Saxondale]

you just need to select the Chinese keyboard in the settings, I'm sure it can't be much different to an iPhone. you should be able to toggle between keyboards with a single button. i have english, pinyin, Chinese stroke and korean keyboard all running at once on my iPhone.

[Balthazar]

This thread is two weeks old, but I thought I'd warn you just in case. Be sure to check whether the Chinese language support is installed prior to buying it. My smart-phone, which admittedly is some years old (Samsung GT-I9000) does not support Chinese characters (at least not this version, bought in Norway). So while I can input them into an SMS just fine (using any of the numerous input methods available) when I send the message I will get the warning that the recipient might not be able to see the characters. Which, it turns out, they don't (even if their phone has the Chinese character set installed).

I'm not sure how easy it is to fix this unless you are fairly tech savvy, According to Pinyin Joe "the only complete solution is to find a Chinese system ROM for your model phone, root your phone while connected to a PC, and flash in the new ROM. [...] If you're a software engineer comfortable with Linux and embedded systems, maybe that will be worth trying. But is it a time-consuming task, and a scary portion of the people who try this wind up "bricking" their phone or tablet - it even happens to experts - so my best advice to most people is to sell their device on eBay and buy a new one that includes Chinese."

It's incredibly that developers leave out languages due to space considerations in this day of cheap memory.

Edit: Note that this only applies for SMS messages (from what I've tried). I can use Chinese characters with no problem with WhatsApp, for instance.

[anonymoose]

Thanks for letting me know. I haven't bought a phone yet, so I'll bare that in mind.

[john1111]

Hi, I know this is an old topic but I am in the UK and thinking of buying an unlocked S3 or S4 that I need to be able use in China, if the original poster sees this please could you let me know if everything went smoothly?

 

Thanks!