Chinese text messaging in US

[ddjiii]

Here's a tough one. My wife wants to send SMS/text messages in Chinese to China. Does anyone know of a phone and carrier that will allow this? It seems that the phone she has currently can give her a Chinese display (menus, etc.) but has no Chinese input system. Unclear whether or not it can display Chinese text from others, probably not.

Thanks for any help.

[Quest]

It seems that the phone she has currently can give her a Chinese display (menus, etc.) but has no Chinese input system. Unclear whether or not it can display Chinese text from others, probably not.

US phones can't input or display Chinese. The menus are just menus.

[zhouwenzheng]

Heyy dd,

Im curious, what phone is it that can display chinese characters? Did you get in the US, or in China?

[Quest]

Some US nokia phones can display Chinese menus, but that's as far as they go. They cannot display Chinese text messages.

[malinuo]

When I lived in the US a few years ago I bought an Ericsson phone that at least could display Chinese WAP pages. The phone was clearly made for another market, but I bought it in a standard phone shop on a major shopping street in Boston, MA. Didn't try SMS though.

[ddjiii]

Yup, her phone is a Nokia 7260. She got it in NY, but from a Chinese cell phone store in Flushing, so it might not be a standard American phone.

Thanks for the advice.

[smalltownfart]

As far as I know sending SMS with Chinese chars is currently not possible with any of the US/North American carriers. This is different from using WAP, as the messages have to be processed through a SMS gateway at your carrier.

I was working on some messaging/SMS related software projects a couple of years ago and I think most carriers here are using an extended or slightly customized singlebyte char sets that are basically western european based. These were no multibyte charsets supported (and certainly not unicode).

[wfujkramer]

the store that sold her the phone in flushing (or anybody on the street in flushing) would have the answer to this question years before anybody on this forum would. Why didn't she think to ask there? if you're looking for a cheap calling plan to china, solving this problem, or anything else, why didn't you think to ask the chinese community who have all been collectively solving these problems for years. If nobody there can do it, it cannot be done. end of story.

[snarfer]

If you have a GSM phone you can probably flash it with Chinese firmware. There are a number of companies in the US who charge about 25 dollars for this service.

[zhouwenzheng]

which companies do that? I wanna use chinese in the US. And UK for that matter

[snarfer]

the cheapest is DaVinciteam.com or you could try iunlock.com

there are many others.

[trancedazn]

im pretty sure that you can text in chinese in the US, but you just need a phone that'll support chinese input. maybe you could go to china (or a chinatown) and ask them if they sell unlocked phones with asian language support. i have a HK friend that has a phone that has chinese input that she uses to text with her friends.

[ddjiii]

Aha, so maybe it can be done. Flashing the firmware is a good idea and I think that's the route we'll try and take.