Mobile Phones w/ Support for Chinese Characters?

antifoidulus asks: "I am learning both Chinese and Japanese(well, I can converse in Japanese, but I can only say that I want to eat stuff in Chinese!) and I was curious if there were any phones available in the US which I can use to read/write Chinese/Japanese characters. I frequently communicate with friends in Japan, and I would like be able to send Japanese mail on my phone. I have a Japanese phone, but it seems Verizon says that it will not work on their network. I would prefer to have something that I can upload Java programs to, so I can customize my language practice."

Comments

Re:Loads of issues

[beswicks]

While this is true, there are PLENTY of phones that can do japanise / chinese character encoding.

The basic way to so it, with only the ~12 buttons or so on a mobile phone, is to mark the keys with the different types of strokes that make up the chacters. Chinese charaters (and therfore at least some of japanise, but i don't know how to write 'any' japanise) are written in a particular order from a finite set of strokes, so it you know how to write chineese properly (i.e. know the stroke order rules not just the 'pretty pictures') this system is VERY usable.

In fact I can use a chineese phone to type better than i can use a full keyboard, because the system makes more sense to me.

Also for the chineese, getting a chineese font ain't that hard, and if your using java to build and app, then its unicode anyway.

If you could be bothered to code an app, all you'd need is a java phone, and a marker to add the stokes to the keys.