Cell phones with PingYing

[maybin]

I have an APPLE iPhone 3G. So I’m alright. Trouble is, I still need a traditional phone to go to China with.

I need a phone which can input Ping Ying (ni hao ma) and perhaps have simplified Chinese Characters.

I asked around, but many cell phone shops around my area won’t let me play with the phones or know much about inputing Ping Ying when writing a message.

Which phones have the Ping Ying input with Simplified Chinese character input?

Nokia?
SE?
Samsung?
LG?

I’m leaning toward Nokia since I had 4 of their older phones. But I hear they do not have Ping Ying…

[jashsu]

[quote=“maybin”]I have an APPLE iPhone 3G. So I’m alright. Trouble is, I still need a traditional phone to go to China with.

I need a phone which can input Ping Ying (ni hao ma) and perhaps have simplified Chinese Characters.[/quote]
Nearly all if not all feature phones released in Taiwan or China use zhuyin IME (aka “bopomofo”). Pinyin input is only used by those whos native language is typed in latin, so you’ll pbb not have much luck finding a feature phone with it on board.

Why can’t you just bring your iPhone? As i’m told, China Mobile now has UMTS 3G. You can roam onto it from most 3G carriers in the US/TW.

[yuli]

[quote="maybin"I need a phone which can input Ping Ying (ni hao ma) and perhaps have simplified Chinese Characters.[/quote]

Here is info about PinYin for traditional characters on phones (maybe there is some info in those threads that you can use)

Chinese on your phone

Does anyone know of a handset that allows you to type in traditional Chinese using pinyin? Thanks.

Pinyin input for mobile phones

I used to have a trusty motorola which is to my knowledge one of the few brands in Taiwan which has the option to input Chinese using pinyin when you are writing a text message. However with my new nokia this seems an impossibility. I emailed nokia and they were not willing to help. Does anyone know of software I could install on a symbian S60 phone which enables pinyin input? Alternatively, is there any other way around this problem?

[zacha]

What I know (second hand knowledge most of it):
Taiwanese Sony Ericsson: Has pinyin and traditional, do not know about simplified.
Taiwanese Nokia: Has traditional zhuyin, no pinyin, do not know about simplified.
Taiwanese Motorola: Har traditional pinyin, do not know about simplified.
Chinese Nokia: Has simplified pinyin, do not know anything else.

[headhonchoII]

I got a Nolia E71 recently in Taiwan, they specially installed HK Chinese which has hanyu pinyin input. I would have bought a blackberry but they told me the system was locked down under contract between Taiwan DaGeDa and RIM. You probably need the shop to do this on most of the phones bought in Taiwan if you want hanyu pinyin input.

[kitkat]

Sony Erricson has pinyin. I also had difficulty finding a phone with Pinyin, because the shop assistants didn’t understand what I meant, you need to say something like ‘roma pinyin’. Perhaps someone else can clarify/confirm the exact phrase?
Ask the assistants to put the phone in English mode, then go to the text messaging section, and check out the language options. I did have one phone that let me toggle between languages without having to go into the menu, but unfortunately I can’t recall which one it was. It was dead handy though, and I really missed that function when I switched phones.

[Lord_Lucan]

All mainland phones use pinyin. If you need pinyin and Trad characters get a SonyEricsson and flash it with HK software, or buy your phone in HK. Then you’ll most likely get stroke order input and Hanyu Pinyin. That’s what I did and have had no problems in Taiwan, China, and HK using Simplified or Traditional characters with Hanyu Pinyin input.

[alidarbac]

The two Benq phones I’ve had in the past and the Motorola I’m currently using both have Hanyu Pinyin input for traditional characters. Many phone shops in the Gongguan area on Dingzhou Rd. or in Ximending will let you play around with their phones to see for yourself.

Agreed with kitkat that saying “Wo xuyao Hanyun pinyin” is only getting to get blank stares and you should ask for “Luoma pinyin.” Of course, I guess there’s always the slim possibility that you’d get a phone programmed with 痛用 Pinyin (pun intended).

But I’ve yet to find a cheap phone (not some 26,000NT smartphone) that will let me input 詞 instead of only 字. That is, if I want to type the word 嫉妒 (ji2du4), I have to type “ji2,” search through all the ji’s in the second tone, select 嫉, it tries to guess the next character but 8 times out of 10 it would require fewer strokes to manually type in the second character du4 and hit arrow arrow arrow arrow to select the second character. If there were only a way I could just type ji2du4 straight up and get presented with that 詞, my life would be so much easier.

[jashsu]

Agreed with kitkat that saying “Wo xuyao Hanyun pinyin” is only getting to get blank stares and you should ask for “Luoma pinyin.” Of course, I guess there’s always the slim possibility that you’d get a phone programmed with 痛用 Pinyin (pun intended).

For clarification, “Roma pinyin” is not a type of Romanization scheme (like Hanyu and Tongyong), it basically tells the shopkeep that the entry method uses Latin characters (abc) rather than 注音 (bopomofo) or stroke input. If one has a model in mind, it should be easy enough to find out with a simple Google search whether Pinyin input is supported by searching “拼音文字輸入” + whatever the model number is. However unless the phone is a smartphone, it is unlikely the typeface files contain both Simplified (簡體) and Traditional (正體) symbols. It may be possible to reflash a featurephone to change its files to work with Simplified.

[yuli]

I’ve yet to find a cheap phone (not some 26,000NT smartphone) that will let me input 詞 instead of only 字.

Japanese phones work with 詞 the way you describe - which phones in Taiwan can you recommend for being able to do that (even if they are expensvie)?

[Fortigurn]

Pinyin character entry is easily installed on any English Windows Mobile OS.

[jashsu]

[quote=“alidarbac”]I’ve yet to find a cheap phone (not some 26,000NT smartphone) that will let me input 詞 instead of only 字.

Japanese phones work with 詞 the way you describe - which phones in Taiwan can you recommend for being able to do that (even if they are expensvie)?[/quote]
If money is no object, just about any smartphone can. Google has an excellent port of their Google Pinyin IME (谷歌拼音輸入法) for Android. It includes dictionary updates from server and custom user dictionary on server. The major flaw is currently the Android version does not have an option for Traditional characters only (it will suggest both Traditional and Simplified characters). I’m not sure if setting the System Locale to Taiwan or PRC would fix that, as I don’t want my entire System UI in Chinese.

In Windows:

On Android:

Note the 詞 key in the lower left which allows you to specify to the IME parts of a sentence to be distinctly converted into phrases, allowing you to input entire complex sentences easily.

[yuli]

If money is no object, just about any smartphone can. […] Note the 詞 key in the lower left which allows you to specify to the IME parts of a sentence to be distinctly converted into phrases, allowing you to input entire complex sentences easily.

:thanks:

[yuli]

Some follow-up questions: viewtopic.php?t=84497 (change of topic, that’s why)…

[tango42]

My 3G iphone does Pinyin easily. It converts it to Chinese when inputting. In fact, it is quite fun and easier to input than Chinese. Does English as well. And quite a few other languages. Use it in all applications when inputting characters. I just select English, Chinese, or Pinyin.

Maybe your does too. Or can.