From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > I am looking at the GSM 03.38 specification > > GSM 03.38 Version 5.3.0 July 1996 > http://www.mobilecity.cz/doc/GSM_03.38_5.3.0.pdf > > GSM 03.38 Version v7.0.0 July 1998-07 > http://www.tvrelsat.com/sentinel/pdf/0338-700.pdf > > specification about GSM 03.38 default alphabet- > http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/ETSI/GSM0338.TXT > > Any one know can tell me is there any place I can find > out all the details about which cell phone model does > support UCS2 SMS Data Coding Scheme in additional to > the "default" alphabet? And what is the character set they > support ? Latin1 ? MES-1 or MES-2 ? Thanks
I have read that the European standard defined MES-1 as a simple extension of the basic LL8 set in which one icelandic letter and the euro symbol were added to the core set of characters sets coming from ISO 8859, Windows ANSI codepages, PC/DOS OEM codepages and Macintosh 8 bit sets, including Greek and Latin, but excluding Hebrew and Arabic despite they were also used for some minority European languages. The intent was to create a subset that could easily be incorporated into small devices, and the GSM standard adopted this initial subset, initially encoded with a ITU technic (i.e. with diacritics coded before the base letter). GSM charsets are mostly from MES-1, but GSM phones now prefer using a UTF-8 scheme based on Unicode, where extensions are added depending on the national markets where they are deployed (so support for basic Arabic or basic Hebrew is optional but now comes frequently on phones from Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel, Sony, Motorola, only with the Unicode scheme, not in the ITU encoding scheme). Almost all European GSM service providers now support the Unicode scheme, as it offers a better international interoperability, however the MES-1 subset is certainly the minimum level supported on both the GSM ITU encoding scheme, or the Unicode UTF-8 scheme. Phone manufacturers all need to adapt their phone to national needs, but for Europe the MES-1 subset is the minimum set required. If a phone model must be sold in Japan or US, it has to be adapted to that market. As GSM 900 and DCS 1800 are European standards, and as US and Japan use another standard, additional subsets may be added, possibly by making some sacrifice on some MES-1 characters then reduced from some scripts (notably Greek and Cyrillic) to allow including support for Japanese models. In all events, all phones should support the Latin1 set, independantly of the encoding scheme actually used. But the manufacturer origin of the phone will be important. Phones are much less constrained now than with the past and slow SMS system. Almost all models now support MMS on faster data networks (GPRS now,and 3G networks later when they will start being deployed). For MMS, they need faster processors, more memory, and larger internal softwares, so the need to restrict the character set is less critical than it was. But the key factor will be interoperability between phones and markets. So the situation for now is a mix of MES-1, and Basic Japanese (Katakana/Hiragana). I don't know what support these phones offer for Chinese. If those phones exist they probably only work in China or Japan.
