How to Install Windows Mobile Chinese Version

[欧阳海]

Hello everyone,

Until recently I was running Pleco on a Dopod D805 (aka HTC Love) smartphone purchased at 中关村 for far too much money. Shortly after returning to the US I lost the darn thing. Since I now realize my life will never be complete without Pleco, I need to buy a new (Verizon-compatible) smartphone. I have my eye on the HTC Vogue (aka Verizon Touch XV6900, HTC Elf, etc.).

One feature of the Dopod I really appreciated was that WM was entirely in Chinese. As I understand it, the Dopod phones are just flashed with a particular ROM that has the Chinese version of WM on it. Is this correct? After I buy the Vogue, what do I need to do to convert it to a Chinese-only phone?

Thanks in advance for your help!

And if anyone can recommend cost-effective solutions for never losing one's phone (e.g., using a holster-style phone holder) I will be grateful.

 

[ldolse]

Easiest way to find what you want is to search around the xda-developers.com sites - either forums.xda-developers.com or wiki.xda-developers.com

Between the two you should be able to find lists of all the worldwide ROMS, including the Chinese ones. Since it sounds like you plan to buy Verizon's branded version you'll probably also need to unlock the phone before you install the Chinese ROM. Info should be in the same locations. Be sure to do your homework so that you don't turn your device into a brick.

 

[Andy]

I've been looking for a Chinese rom that's compatible with a Verizon Touch Pro for a while, now. I've found some Chinese sites that have cdma roms that might be compatible, but I'm not really sure if everything would work, like the radio, etc. An ideal situation might be if someone more proficient than me at rom and kitchen building could use the language files from a dumped Chinese rom to build a custom US cdma rom, but I haven't found anything like this. Searches of forums like XDA and ppcgeeks mostly come up with ways to replace a Chinese rom with an English one.

 

[ldolse]

The ROMs are split into two pieces, OS and Radio. If you find a Chinese ROM you can just extract and use the OS portion and leave the original radio ROM intact. No kitchen required. Make sure you do sufficient reading on XDA about the procedure before you attempt it.

<edit> The above may not be true for the CDMA version, looks like the OS is a bit different when using that radio, but I can't tell for certain. If that's true there probably won't be any way to get a Chinese OS without cooking it yourself, as China doesn't use CDMA.

 

[Andy]

欧阳海, if you're interested in a Chinese user interface on your WM phone without flashing the rom, a good way to do this is to install a UI program, like SPB Mobile Shell, on top of a localizer, like CE-Star. This will allow you to display a lot of the menus and onscreen buttons in Chinese. The WM Start menu, which you won't really need anymore, will still be in English.