It works now!
About a week ago I wrote about Japanese input on S60 in general, and on my Nokia E71 in particular. Well, I’ve finally found a solution that satisfies me. That’s in 2 steps, and it involves a little bit more that installing packages. But the only “system modification” is done on the MicroSD card, so I feel like it’s pretty safe. If things go wrong, you can just pull the MicroSD card and boot without it. Anyway, if things go really wrong (it was fine for me but I don’t know what can happen for you) don’t blame me. Everything you do is your own responsibility, so don’t follow my advice if you’re not comfortable in tweaking your phone. Also, please don’t ask me for help to setup your phone. All I know is written here, if it works for you it’s great but if it doesn’t I can’t help more.
Important note: that should work on most Nokia phones, but there is no guarantee that it will work with other brands. A reader reported that it doesn’t work well on a Samsung i550.
In short: you can read Japanese for free, and you can write Japanese for ¥5,000 (roughly $50 depending on the rate).
Reading Japanese
The first step is making sure you can read Japanese on your phone. If it’s like mine, out of the box you see squares if you visit Japanese websites, or view emails in Japanese.
All you have to do, is visit this page and follow instructions:
http://japanesefont.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-to-install-japanese-fonts-on-non.html
In short, that will involve:
- Downloading the Nokia SDK that contains the Japanese font
- Copy the font to your MicroSD, in the right folder with a name that mirrors your existing fonts (so you don’t have to override your fonts; you just add fonts that take priority)
- Reboot, and you’re done
Now, if you do it you will notice that the whole font is changed, i.e. even English text looks different than before. The font is “thiner”. That was my grip with +J, I really didn’t like the font they were recommending. In this case it’s different: the font looks really good. This is the font that Nokia uses in the phone they sell in Japan.
(Alternatively, you could spend €30 on a solution full of DRM that I don’t even feel the need to cite… Who would want that? Additionally, I don’t even know if it’s compatible with +J.)
Here you go, you can visit Japanese websites! If that’s all you want, if you don’t care much about input, you can stop here. But if you want to be able to input Japanese, read on.
Writing Japanese
Now you need an input method. I said in my previous post that +J was a great, complete solution that rivals what you get on Japanese phone and even computers. However, the font they offer didn’t look good to me.
At that point we have a phone capable to read Japanese with a good-looking font so we don’t need to install the ugly one they propose. You do need a fairly good Japanese level to install and use +J because all doc and menus are in Japanese.
Before you install +J, make sure it works for your device. Read the supported devices list. It should work on a S60 3rd edition, 3rd edition FP1 and some FP2 devices. It has only been tested with Nokia devices.
Here are the steps:
- Go to the +J page
- Download “+J for S60本体” (do NOT download the font)
- Follow the instructions to install +J from the PDF documentation (SKIP the “install the font” part)
…And now you have full working Japanese input on your phone! But for 30 days only, that’s the duration of the test version. You will need to spend ¥5,000 for the full version – but believe me, it’s worth it and there’s no DRM.
Or, for more money (€60 – no joke) you can have a solution that doesn’t work very well, is full of DRM and clutters your context menu with input-related entries. That’s the product that I cited in my older post, but I don’t recommend it.
Conclusion
Some comments:
- My only grip (but it’s minor) is that switching from English input to Japanese input on a E71 is done with a three keys combination. Not very convenient.
- French accents still work. I mean for display, because my phone is a qwerty one, English OS, and I couldn’t input accents before anyway. Not sure what would happen on a French phone, maybe you lose the ability to input accents? Maybe you need to input in qwerty even if your keys are labeled azerty?
- By default, +J will be in 9-keys mode (for phones with just a phone pad). You need to switch that to romaji for the E71.
- By default, all applications will start in hiragana input mode (to input Japanese as opposed to English). Unless you live in Japan, you’ll want to change that setting too.
It’s very hard to find the so called japanese font, I tried to look for the SDK and I have installed about 3 of them (2nd FP2 Japanese, 3rd MR and now FP2).
I don’t which ttf I need to copy.
I will tell you about the french accent later, I have a french E71.
But still, there is a more way to go to have a good international keybord (like the iphone). That’s the main problem and the reason that I can’t get rid of my Iphone 3g.
Symbian or Nokia need to do something about that.
I took whatever font that works on windows and have installed it on my phone. It works but it7s still a bit ugly. I’m going to look for other fonts and to try them.
For input I’m going to wait a little because for now I just need to read ( I’m still learning japanese)
But multilangage support on Nokia is a pain in the ass. Because sometime I write my mails and surf and need to input/read in French, English, Arabic, Thai and Japanese. For the first two no problem but for the others I had to “hack” my expensive usefull phone for that. Like I said, symbian OS developpers need to do something about this in order to have the best OS for mobile phone (for now Iphone handle this part with a good and efficient way)
SO after some tests I have problems for displaying accent character from french and it’s very frustrating, is there a font that support all the characters in the world?
Averroes: I wouldn’t say the iPhone is the best to input multilingual, because lacking a keyboard it’s not great to input anything. Anyway, multilingual (= 2 or more languages that are not English) has always been kind of painful, with computers earlier and with phones today. The reason is simply that very few people actually need that, so the makers don’t really care about it.
That said… The font that I am using works great for Japanese and French, but probably not for Arabic and Thai. I am very surprised that you’re having problems displaying French, because it works for me. I was simply wondering about French accent input (and keyboard layout) while using +J.
Hi.
I tried installing +J on my Samsung i550, but it didn’t work
I think I successfully installed the japanese fonts. With the internal browser, japanese is not displayed, however with opera mini there is no problem.
But text input… doesn’t work. Does anyone know why? Maybe +J doesn’t work on a 10-key model??
I need to add something…
I tried different things, and not everything seems to work. Japanese text is readable in emails and Opera. It is not readable however in SMS and the built-in browser.
Should this work everywhere.. in other words: Did I install it right??
Innos:
* Regarding the font, it is actually a hack that may only work for Nokia phones.
* Looking at the support page for +J here: http://plusj.kthree.co.jp/spec.html
it has only be tested by the author on some Nokia devices. So maybe it doesn’t work on Samsung devices… If you can read and write Japanese (with your computer) you can visit +J’s BBS and ask about it.
* Regardless, it should work on 10-keys keyboard, like on a Japanese 10-keys phone.
hye..
can you help me pleae? i am trying to install japanese font into my n85.
but i dont know which font am i supposed to download.. my phone uses fp2, but it seems that there are no download version for that on the nokia forum page. help me please..thanks
日本語は大丈夫だから、I’ll try. ^^
But it seems odd, that it works on Nokia and wouldn’t work on Samsung, because it’s the same OS.
Can you read japanese in SMS? Or just in Emails?
syaroru: I think the font is the same for FP2, you should just grab the font. Make sure to rename it correctly, see the details on the page that I linked.
Innos: actually I don’t have a SIM card yet so I can’t test SMS. There may be some encoding related issues on the operator side if you’re not in Japan. However it works great in the built-in browser for me.
There may be differences between Nokia and Samsung because even if it’s the same OS, manufacturers often tweak for various reasons, so it may not be exactly the same at the end.
…and because it doesn’t work in the built-in browser, I thought that I installed the fonts wrong, because, let’s face it, the tutorial on blogspot is not well written (not well enough for first-timers like me, anyway).
But if it works in Opera and mail, that’s fine by me. I don’t SMS with people in japanese, and Mail is cheaper anyway.
Damn all this. When I was in Japan, I had a Sanyo cellphone which worked great. Text input I mean. Why can’t they just make it available to other phones..
Maybe I’ll try Psiloc, if I can find a DRM-free version and if +J doesn’t work at all.
hey thanks!!! i used the one for the fp1, and it works like a charm~
thanks!!
this guide really helped!
–all the fonts in my phone turned into boxes when i installed the font provided by plusJ before..so i used the font from the SDK instead. and it works! meaning that eventhough n85 (and other fp2 devices) are listed as not compatible on the plusJ site, you can still make use of it.. just by skipping the font installation part. thanks for the guide!!
It seems like many people find this website via google, so maybe you should add something: You can’t go into “data transfer”-mode (or whatchamaycallit) when plugging in a USB cable, because of the fonts on the SD-Card. And when you take the SD-card out of the cellphone, then there are no letters at all in the menus… at least that’s what happens on my phone. :-\
To fix this, it’s possible to just copy the 4 files from the SD-card to the phone, yes? I mean the 3 font-files and the ceurope-file…
Sorry for using the comments again, but I’ve had success… well, slightly.
I mailed Psiloc, and they want to support Samsung in the future. When? Who knows.
I mailed the +J-guys, but you can’t reach them. All mails came back with a mailer-daemon error
I mailed Mah from M-FEP60, and he pointed me to the M-Fep60 Limited Edition. He also wants to support Samsung in the future, but hasn’t started yet. M-FEP60 is… well, not easy to install and not easy to use, I’ll have to admit.
You have to install M-FEP60 setup, which is the software itself, and M-Fep60, which is the japanese input system. When you launch M-Fep 60 setup after installing it, you can switch between M-Fep60 (japanese) and aknFEP (the normal text input, german in my case).
When you write a text message and you want to switch between these two, you have to use M-Fep60 in the Background and you have to leave the mail writing screen. That’s not very convenient. Then you have only 1 -> a, i, u, e, o; 2 -> ka, ki, ku etc. imput, which is also not very convenient, because there are smarter oney for 10-key. For example, when writing “ki” for tree, you just press 5 and 4, and the kanji is filled in automatically… but sadly, this is not possible here.
Also, you have to memorize the button layout, and how certain functions work, but I don’t have a problem with that.
The biggest letdown so far is, that I have only Hiragana and Katakana. There seems to be a bug in the dictionary, so I’ll have to wait for that one.
Since I have no choice, I’ll use M-FEP60, but I’d rather not. Next time, I’ll buy a nokia…
I looked wrong, dictionary-file WAS up, installed it and it works! Now for some “how convenient is it”-tests…
@Innos
How did you get the fonts on your samsung device? here it only shows blocks and no kanji nor kana …
Th.
Hi,
the pdf is in english so I cant read it all.. do you know if there is english manual?
@sabrina
i mean in japanese.. but it’s okay.. I manage to use M-FEP60 too. thanks for introducing.
;___; no N70. /sob
Would it still be possible to use this on N70?
I have installed japanese fonts on my Nokia E71, and I can read japanese fonts, but English font is changed, it is thinner and smaller, very small even if you chose a large font in your phone options. But my problem is that it doesn’t read all english letters, for exemple “j” letter, and also some letters which I use in my language, anwhich don’t belong to English alphabet.
Can you read all English letters?
I forgat to mention that the phone doesn’t read “j” letter on internet pages only.
Does anyone know if the Japanese font supports “umlauts” (such as ö)?
Ted: the font works for me, I can see pretty much all Western European characters, including umlauts.
hi!
first, thanks for info, as i’ve been rubling around google without luck for a long time, so finally found your nice page.
but what i want to ask you about is:
is there any program like that, but which has an input type like in windows IME, where you just input the sound of kana syllable, press enter and here it is.
eg: to say こんにちは i simply print konnitiha and press enter…
hi, i install M-FEP60 successfully on my E71. I can read and input Japanese now. But how can I add special symbol? If i didnt activate M-FEP60 I just need to press the Ctrl button, and there will be a list of symobls.Any idea?
Hi,
I’ve downloaded and installed the J+ application.
Is there a quicker and simpler way to do this? Because this way you definitely have to use both hands for this… Too bad.
My questions:
1. Is switching between Japanese and English really done only by Ctrl+M (and M is actually Function key+M)? Not only that, then you have to manually choose half-width alphabet. It is gets on my nerve very quicky.
2. How can I enter that long wovel katakana character (looks like a dash) when in Japanese mode? I’m asking because the only way I can think for now is entering the input mode menu (Ctrl+Function key+M), then choose the third submenu from the top, then choose the second item and in it, FINALLY, choose the last character in the third row from the top. I must be doing something very wrong…
3. I’ve placed the Nohindisnr60.ttf, Nohindissb60.ttf and Nohinditsb60.ttf in the Resource/Fonts folder on my memory card, but I’ve read something about the .gdr font as well. What’s it for and which one should I put in the Fonts folder?
4. After the “installation” of the Japanese fonts from the Nokia SDK, the Latin letters are thin (which is my main gripe, since Psiloc’s Crystal Japanese fixes this problem, but has it’s own input method and doesn’t support extra characters). Is there a way to fix this “problem”?
OK, found the answers to questions 1 and 2.
1. I thought I had to press Ctrl+Function key+M symultaneously, which is not the case. You can press Function key, Ctrl and M one after another and it still works. However, when your Nokia is in half-width alphabet mode, usual writing rules don’t apply (or so it seems). I mean, first letter of every new sentence is not capitalized automatically. Too bad. Also, you have to use both hands if you want to input capitals (right?). Is there an e-mail address we could send our comments to? I’ve heard that the offical J+ e-mail address doesn’t work…
2. Long katakana vowel character is basically a “minus” sign (Function key + S), right?
So that’s it for now. I haven’t tried Psiloc Crystal on my Nokia E71 (had it on N73 and it worked, even thought it’s not very natural), but reading how you can’t actually enter the long katakana vowel character is really unbelievable. Has anyone maybe found a solution for this (or sent an e-mail to Psiloc about it)?
I haven’t tried M-FEP60 either. Does anyone know how it works and looks on Nokia E71? Does it support additional characters like J+ (which has loads)? What about the font? Is it better than J+’s (I highly doubt it, but anyway…)? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
OK, would anybody be so kind to continue this thread and further our knowledge of the options we have?
The instructions for M-FEP60 that I’ve found on the net seem kind of vague. I’d like to see some screenshots of it and some viewers’ comments if possible. I’m interested in M-FEP60′s usability and some of the pros and cons of using it (as compared to other input methods). Thank you, people.
Hi markog,
Yes, I’ve also noticed that you can press fn, ctrl and m sequentially rather than simultaneously and that’s much more convenient. And long katakana vowel is the minus sign, like on a computer keyboard.
Regarding Psiloc Crystal: I’ve posted on them forum (though I can’t find the topic maybe they deleted it?), there was a long post where everyone was posting limitations such as the long katanaka thing. Their response was a standard one, like “thank you for your feedback, but currently the priority in on other products”. The last update for Crystal Japanese was more than a year ago, and the only reason was the update of their DRM (!!). In short, they don’t care about this product, and it’s so limited that I don’t see then getting a user base big enough so they would care.
Regarding M-FEP60: I haven’t tried it because like you I was confused by the installation procedure at the time I looked. However today there seems to be signed packages so I would guess it’s not that hard. The advantage of M-FEP60 is that it’s free, however recently the author released a beta version of something called M-FEP60 Pro that will be a shareware. I don’t know what’s different. Also I don’t know about the font, I wonder which font they use. Since it’s open source and free of charge, I’d be surprised if they used anything different from +J.
OK, it seems that J+ font has been updated recently:
http://plusj.kthree.co.jp/
or
http://plusj.kthree.co.jp/announce09121701.html
Does anyone know how to update it on an already installed version of J+ on Nokia phone (E71)? Also, what does it look like (I can’t seem to find any screenshots of it in action)? I’m using the font from the Nokia SDK and I’m not sure if I should switch…
I’d really appreciate any help.
PlusJ works GREAT for nokia s60. (I use it on nokia e51)
If you reset your phone’s present date to 20 years in the future, install the software, then reset your phone’s date to the correct date, your +J software will work for 20 years + 30 days (free trial).
Bad thing about +J is it DOES NOT anticipate and give you suggestions as you type, so you have to type full words. Especially on a phone keypad, suggestions are best to improve input speed.
Other than this, everything is EXCELLENT!! I can use japanese in EVERY 3rd party app (including opera, bolt, nimbuzz, fring).
@ markog… You are asking if you should update/change your Japanese font. “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.” Why do you want to change your font?? Is it broken or limited???
Well, I’ve read that the “old” font was the only bad thing about +J so I thought, if they updated it, it must be better. Right? Anyway, thanks for you info. It’s really appreciated.
Also, Edyta from Psiloc has posted info on their Forum that some of the issues (“dash” and punctuation) with Crystal Japanese have finally been solved:
http://getsatisfaction.com/psiloc/topics/please_fix_crystal_japanese_its_not_working_correctly_on_e71
So, things are getting better.