vB Easy Archive - Firmwares with extra font support??

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Firmwares with extra font support??
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Posted by: IonNuke

I got a question that still boggles my mind~~~

I have a Sharp 770SH with European firmware and I've sent ring tones that I made that have Chinese file names to the phone and they don't show up. In fact the names are all empty spaces.

My 770SH is: version 1.010 / EMP U250 / OW: 7.0.2.1.h.1.137

Then I have this Sharp 703SH from Vodafone UK that was just recently unlocked. I would assume they it was a European firmware of some sort.... however why does this one support Chinese characters perfectly and the 770SH doesn't???

I figured they're all from the same region. 770SH has Proximus branding but I thought Proximus is still owned by Vodafone in Europe.

I have attached an image of the 703SH's version screen and some examples of what I'm talking about...... Anyone have any ideas???

references of photo
http://www.students.niu.edu/~z045866/703sh_lng.jpg

Posted by: martindesu

703SH as with 903SH - Japanese font and UK font.

Removed from 770SH, 880SH.

It's annoying, but it's part of life with SHARP.

Basically, I think it's because they can't be bothered (too much effort to code it in again).

You might wanna make those pictures smaller!!

Posted by: AL9999

Because the Euro 703 and 903 are almost complete clones of their Japanese counterparts 703SH and 903SH, so the Japanese font used in both phones were left over, allowing semi Chinese support. Semi, as you can see from your last photo, because not all Chinese characters are supported with it.

However, the 770SH was tailor made for Europe; its counterpart 705SH was based on the same design but used different software. Nonetheless the 770SH still supports Japanese encoding and its font was kept (as you can probably see from the alphanumeric characters used in Java apps, which are the same as from the 703/903), but the Japanese characters were deleted from the font. Perhaps to save on memory costs? I'm not sure, but because of that you get empty spaces where the Japanese text should be.

For the record the 880SH doesn't have the font and doesn't support the encoding at all, hence you get black boxes appearing instead.

Posted by: IonNuke

I guess I should try adding something with katakana/hiragana to see if it shows up.

I tried playing back some MP3s and it's strange how the ID tags of the songs if they originally had simplified Chinese they came up as gibberish. However if the ID tags were created with traditional Chinese then all the characters show up properly.

Posted by: AL9999

You'll find Hiragana/Katakana won't show up. I've already tried it.

In the 903's case MP3s had to have ID3v1 tags to show up in the correct encoding; if they used ID3v2 tags they'd show up as gibberish. Could be the same with the 770SH but I haven't tried it admittedly as the point's moot; no font support anyway.

The 903/703 only support Unicode, Western Europe and Japanese encodings, so it's possible that a different encoding is being used when you put simplified Chinese in. I'm not quite sure though...

Posted by: IonNuke

770SH shows no Chinese characters but only katakana shows up. Hiragana is ignored and Chinese characters is still gibberish. I wonder why Sharp doesn't just come with a system that just works.

Posted by: martindesu

Quote:

Originally Posted by IonNuke

770SH shows no Chinese characters but only katakana shows up. Hiragana is ignored and Chinese characters is still gibberish. I wonder why Sharp doesn't just come with a system that just works.

Well, if you live in Japan and own a Sharp handset, I would say that it does 'just work'. Apart from DRM MP3s (but I guess people either buy them or buy DRM from iTunes in Japan - I know it can't be used in phones), it does work really well.

However, if you want a phone that "just works" get the iPhone. It displays Japanese, Chinese and almost anything I threw at it. I just got bored with it and all the hype - have gone back to owning ケイタイ again.

Posted by: IonNuke

I don't like the iphone at all. I had a test model a while back and did some tests on it. It was like a brick in my pocket~~~

The phone that don't have chinese support I just have to spend a day copying the SIM contacts to the phone and re-naming like 50% of the contacts to English and then leave it alone and i'll be fine

Posted by: AL9999

Quote:

Originally Posted by martindesu

Well, if you live in Japan and own a Sharp handset, I would say that it does 'just work'.

Exactly... their phones for Japan have Japanese that just works. Their phones for Hong Kong and Taiwan have Chinese support that just works. Finally, their phones for Europe have European language support that works fine. It so happens that the 903/703 were built off the Japanese version and the font left installed, but it was finally removed with the coming of the 770SH.

You probably should have gotten one of the Chinese versions instead if you wanted full Chinese support. In this case, the 770SH's HK counterpart is the SX633 or SX633a, while the Taiwanese one is the WX-T81. Look them up.

Posted by: IonNuke

Hurray~~~ I didn't know Sharps were this confusing~~~

But I get it now. Thankx all!

I guess it's just keep buying sharps~~~