Installing Korean support on Windows Mobile 6.5

I was successful last weekend to set up Korean for my new HTC Imagio smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.5. It took some digging and in the end there was no real "how-to".

I followed some links in the user comments at the blog I wrote about earlier that had some registry key manipulation suggestions for adding Korean font to a phone.

First I downloaded this font pack 'Korean_font.cab',
http://www.careace.net/2008/11/11/korean-font-for-samsung-epix-download/
I can't really verify the source or speak to security of this file. It seems to have worked without noticeable downsides, I would say download at your own risk.

I copied this to my memory card in my phone via USB then executed it. One downside: I found I did seemingly have to reset my phone every time I disconnected my USB for it to recognize my memory card, which is odd.

Executing the cab from the Folder View on the phone worked, no problems. I think I did a Soft Reset afterward.

Second, I downloaded another .cab from a user's comment post

#42 Written By punkwhan on August 3rd, 2009 @ 11:50 pm
If you want write hangul.
You can you moakey keyboard from samsung.
Download link below.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WV1PF7WC

This download link brought me to 'Moakey2.0.0528.rar'. This provides a Hanguel keyboard input method that you can switch to when typing in any application. Again it worked for me, I haven't noticed any spyware, but I have no idea where this comes from.

The .rar contained four versions of the .cab, I suppose for different screen resolution phones. I picked Moakey2.0.0528_WVGA.cab, copied to my memory card, rebooted the phone and then installed. It did have a Korean "installation" wizard, presumeably if you want to use this to write Korean you can navigate your way through that. I don't understand the options but it seemed to be a way to configure the "style" of your korean keyboard, the way I set it up seems to be more like a cell phone input method than a computer keyboard layout.

Installation went ok, after reboot by default I get the Hanguel keyboard, and you can easily switch back to the default provided QWERTY keyboard from an arrow next to the keyboard icon at the bottom when ever you can input text in an app.

So far so good an no compatibility problems.

Imagio WinMo Update: Korean fonts, Android OS

This blog discusses some do-it-yourself steps for installing Korean fonts.

Requires a 3rd-party WinMo registry editor

http://leeblood.com/2008/02/16/windows-mobile-6-changing-the-system-font-adding-korean-support/

It is from 2008 and for Windows Mobile 6.1. My phone is 6.5 so may be no luck.

Also in my quest to find out more about what kinds of things I can do with this phone I found this thread at ppcgeeks forums where they booted a version of the Android OS on the HTC Imagio phone.

http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/showthread.php?s=59f047bb80ecfbf608588ea4f9f4b35e&t=104666


If that becomes relatively standard in the future it would be the best of both worlds. How would Verizon feel about it?

WinMo phone

Just got a new phone this weekend. It was an HTC Imagio on the Verizon network.

I was really looking to upgrade from my 2 year old Samsung "dumb"phone with a cracked LCD over. I don't use cell phones very much, but I do travel for work a fair amount and the ability to get on the internet from anywhere appealed to me. I spent about a weekend researching, the iPhone is the cool gadget still, lots of my friends and colleagues have them, but I didn't want to switch to AT&T, not that I am a huge fan of Verizon, at least their service is reliable and consistent.

Verizon basically markets the new Motorola Droid and HTC Imagio, along with Crackberries as the top "smart phones" currently with the HTC Droid Eris being the cheaper Android OS offering. I was drawn to the Imagio solely because of it's "Global-Ready" capabilities. Like I said I travel for work, and recently have been assigned European and African accounts. A single phone i could use while traveling would be helpful.

The Verizon sales people initially pushed the Droid, then switched when I mentioned the global travel needs. I wasn't sure about Imagio because it is WinMo, I've never used it before, in general it seems to have a not-as-good-as iPhone or Android vibe. The Imagio has what appears to be better screen-resolution though they claimed it was the same. My wife and I did a simultaneous test of playing the same youtube clip on each phone side by side. The Droid was more pixilated, and the actual video size on the screen was a smaller square. Both took quite a while to load the clip. Actually a nice touch on the Imagio was it showed a % complete while waiting.

In the end, due to these factors I settled on the Imagio and WinMo over Droid and Google. If there were a global ready android phone it probably would have been a different story.

So far my experience has been fairly good. Call quality, what little I've tried has been much better than previous phone. The touch screen is good, I love the stylus, even though the on-screen keyboard has given me no problems. The app-store "Windows Marketplace" is somewhat limited, but I can't really compare it to anything else.

Big disappointment was no native support for Asian fonts/languages, especially Korean. I was surpised by this. I figured given how fairly easy it is to install Korean IME/fonts on Windows it would be similar on Windows Mobile. Apparently not. Also the WinMo apps may not even by internationalized even if the fonts were there. Fairly bush league for 2010 on a "global-ready" phone.