That's an interesting question Don. I recently bought a so-called "ChiPhone" (Chinese phone) which has message catalogs and input methods for English, Français, Español, Português, Italiano, Deutsch, Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Türçe, Tiếng Việt, русский язык, Arabic, Persian, Romanian, ไทย, 繁體中文 and of course 简体中文.
The phone has a side slide-out QWERTY keyboard which is very convenient. The input method for 简体中文 is decent enough. However, overall the software on the phone sucks, and a number of the other language input methods are awkward or bordering on unusable. The lack of Japanese is also annoying. And there is another big problem: at least here in the U.S., it looks like at least some major carriers refuse to accept Unicode text messages outside of the ASCII range. I wish I knew more specifically what is or is not accepted. I know I have had problems trying to send Chinese text messages with T-Mobile: the carrier refused to accept messages containing "symbols". Very annoying. Does anyone on this list know specifically what limitations carriers in the U.S. impose on unicode SMS messages? Are there specific encoding issues? I think it would be especially valuable to know if the iPhone4 using ATT in the U.S. deals with Unicode properly? The reason I single out the iPhone4 is because its high-resolution screen is very much superior to a typical smart phone, especially when it comes to reading scripts with many strokes like Chinese, or with many small diacritical marks, like Vietnamese or Thai. (If you have not done so yet, try reading a Chinese web page on your typical smart phone, and then do the same on an iPhone4 to see the difference). - Ed On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Don Osborn <[email protected]> wrote: > What do users of this list find to be the most Unicode friendly smart > phones? Apps for those phones? Best input systems for texting beyond ASCII > (and potentially multiscriptly)? > > > > Thanks in advance for any feedback. I’m back in the US and in the market for > a new phone, and if I pay for high-end, don’t want to be limited to ASCII. > > > > Don
