Guide: Viewing Chinese Characters on S60v5

Happen to own a S60v5 device (Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, 5800 XpressMusic, N97, etc..) but it is not able to display Chinese characters? This guide will teach you how to add Chinese characters support (read only) to your phone.

Chinese Characters Support in Web

Who would need this guide?
If you bought your phone from oversea (countries such as United Kingdom or United States) or you bought an AP-set phone, then most probably your phone is not running on APAC firmware. You will notice it when Chinese characters are displayed as “squares” on your phone.

What if I need both read and write Chinese characters support?
The easiest solution is to change the product code of your phone to APAC code and then update it with Nokia Software Updater (NSU). This will trick NSU that your phone is from APAC region and it will install the firmware with Chinese language support into your phone. After the firmware update/reinstall, your phone will support Chinese language natively.

However, by changing the product code you void the warranty of your phone. Personally I am not sure how true this is but if Nokia finds out you have changed your product code before (even if you change back to the original code after updating with NSU) you will still lose the warranty.

How do I do it?
Goal: You need to add 4 files (for my case: S60SNR.TTF, S60SSB.TTF, S60TSB.TTF and S60ZDIGI.TTF) to resource\Fonts folder in your phone memory, mass storage OR memory card. The 4 files are identical, just with different file names.

1. Download the necessary files here. (I will remove this link if I am not supposed to share these files.)

2. Connect your phone to the computer via USB in Mass Storage mode or use a card reader.

3. Extract the 4 files to “E:\resource\Fonts”, where E is the drive letter of the memory card. You might need to create a new folder named “Fonts” under “resources” if you can’t find it. Beware that the file name should be “Fonts” and not “font”.

I copied them to C:\ instead of E:\

4. Now, unplug the phone from computer.

5. Then, reboot the phone and your phone can now display Chinese characters.

First thing you will notice is the system font of your phone has changed. The Chinese font is less bold compared to the font in EURO firmwares.

Thick versus thinner font

Chinese Characters in Music Player

Chinese Characters in the Homescreen

Will it slow down my phone?
You will notice your phone is slowed down by half a second if the font files are stored in the memory card. Hence, I copied the files to the internal memory of the phone instead. However, you must have write permission to your C:\. (Not part of this tutorial!)

What if my phone still display “squares”?
- Make sure that you have followed the steps above correctly.
- Your phone might be using different file names for fonts. Use a file manager such as Xplore to access to Z:\resource\Fonts. Rename the files in E:\resource\Fonts to match the file names in Z:\.

Note: Do it at your own risk. I take no responsibility for data lost or phone crash during the process.

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