[kartalis]

Hey there, I am using S60 phones for many many years now and never had a problem regarding the language of the device for both Menus and Writing language, until now.

All these years I was purchasing European Models of popular Nokia S60 phones, my personal languages of interest as an example is English and Greek, others prefer English and something else. While English is present to all Nokia models, many times I purchased Nokia S60 Phones from another regions without the Greek Language pre-installed, however with a simple change of the product code, either myself or by visiting a Nokia Center I was able to install the Greek language I wanted in the phone.

Now the situation is more complicate as Nokia is releasing different versions of its products like NAM models for the American market.

The problem is simple. The NAM models have very limited support of languages, while America, especially USA is well known as a multilingual, multicultural country. In New York alone there are hundred of thousands of people speaking any language you can ever imagine, from Chinese, Japanese, to Russian and Greek, but the NAM models are supporting none of them.

I am currently in USA and using the N95 8GB with Greek language and I will transfer to N97 NAM as soon as it is available because I need to replace my old N95 with the powerful N97 and I really need the 3G support while I am here so NAM N97 is the only option for me right now. The problem is the the Nokia N97 NAM does not come with Greek language support and there is no way to install it, while I am not really care regarding the language in Menus, English is fine, at least for me, the real problem is in Typing. I will need Greek for both emails and Internet posts but most importantly I will need that Language to navigate my content.
A perfect example for this is my "Contacts". My contacts contains 500+ names about 200 of them are in English, and the rest 300 are in Greek. Without the Greek support I cannot press a Letter and minimize my search and scrolling down a list of 500+ contacts is not the best idea of locating information.

I hope you understand the major problem that is been created here.

I believe the best solution for this is the release of individual Language Packs at least for your Symbian Smartphones. I remember Sony Ericsson did it for Symbian UIQ based smartphones many years ago, so I see no reason why Nokia cannot go the same road and solve this major issue. If Language Packs are not possible for some reason then another suggestion is to give the option to install a different language directly from Nokia Software Updater. No matter what way you guys choose, you finally need to face this major problem and somehow provide support for every language you support for all your models.

Please forward this message to anyone or any department responsible for this issue, me and many other really hope this will finally become reality.

[raymondluc]

I agree! I really, REALLY need Chinese language support on this phone, for various reasons:

mp3 ID tags are in Chinese, and all I see are square boxes! How is my 5800 XM supposed to be a good music player if it can't show song titles and artist names?

I constantly check Chinese websites, but I can't do that on my phone. There goes the whole point of N97 (which I have on pre-order). 

I also have contacts with Chinese names, but I have to resort to using the latin alphabet. This is no good.

Please, PLEASE Nokia! Allow us to use language packs and view/write in more languages!

[mccbleue]

There are indeed a lot of people around the world who want to be able to add a particular langage to their phone, but against the figures of many millions of phones sold around the world each year, these people are still a minority. To change the way the phone software is implemented across a whole range of models would be an enormous task, and we all already know that software releases are often problematic.

As far as I know, Nokia is not alone - none of the major manufacturers offers a way for the end user to add language packs, you are always stuck to a selection of languages relevant to the intended region of sale. To develop such a service would need not only the phone software to be changed, but also software to be developed to allow you to carry out the work. Since Nokia provides PC Suite, NSU etc. free of charge, it is unlikely that there is going to be significant new development without the majority of customers demanding it, especially at a time when the industry is in decline due to the recession and mobile manufacturers are cutting costs and personnel around the world.

In some countries, it is possible to have a language pack added by a Nokia service point, though policies on this seem to vary from place to place so it depends where you are, and also if a language pack is added this way it will be lost during any hard reset of software update.

[harsaphes]

I can type Japanese on my US Iphone, but I wont be able to on my Nokia?...wow, theres a reasong to cancel my N97 pre-order.

[zool]

hi every body,

I already canceled my pre-order from nokiausa actually I didn’t canceled I have to change my the credit card by calling the bank and told them I lost my card to have a new one while nokia usa will not cancel the order they said you have to return the order to them and all that because of the language problem and the price. I think I have to keep the damn iphone till something comes up beside the iphone will have the language I need in the next software 3.0.  and my language is Arabic which nokia never support on the NAM nokia phones.

Thanks

 

[pkruger]

For me, it is fine to use my 5800 XM in English, but it would be great to type SMSs in my native language using T9 predictive text. Needless to say, my native language is not available on the 5800 as a T9 predictive language, but what really gets me, is the fact that a year or two ago, the language came pre-installed on Nokia 3310s available in my country.

[morriset]

Ok I can actually understand the possible reason that we are a minority about this situation. But actually I think it cannot be very expensive for nokia to develop a downloadable language package or related. In fact in my N85 mobile bought in Mexico I have Netherlands language available... this is actually a language nothing popular in my country therefore it will be a smaller minority who use this language...

I hope to  a chance to choose different languages, at least russian and german. Is a very good phone but with frustrating language capabilities.

[pkruger]

Check out the following link: Nuance T9 They say:

"Downloadable Languages
Coverage for more than 65 languages. With downloadable languages, it's possible to provide additional language updates beyond what may be sold with the phone initially, customizing the phone for individual users' language needs and preferences."

But where, how...?

[mccbleue]

---

pkruger wrote:

Check out the following link: Nuance T9 They say:

"Downloadable Languages
Coverage for more than 65 languages. With downloadable languages, it's possible to provide additional language updates beyond what may be sold with the phone initially, customizing the phone for individual users' language needs and preferences."

But where, how...?

---

Nuance are talking about adding languages to their software, not to the phone UI itself.

[pkruger]

Well that just sucks!

[pkruger]

What annoys me even further is the fact that I can download my language for the "Dictionary" application on the 5800, but that it then can not be used as the Writing language as well.

[grschinon]

Full support for a language (ie. being able to use a T9 dictionary and have the phone's menus in that language) can only be achieved by having a Nokia Care Point install the relevant language pack. And yes, I do agree that it's high time this were made available to end users. At least it should be made available for S60 smartphones - it may be easier said than done for S40 devices since only a java virtual machine is exposed to the end-user.

Message Edited by grschinon on 26-May-2009 03:06 PM

[car_guy143]

I am sure there would be a market for this in the UK. A lot of Indian/Bangladeshi/Pakistani nationals live in certain parts of the UK and i am sure they'd love to change their phones back to their native languages.

I used to have a Siemens S55 years ago, and when i ran the updater for that phone on my pc i was always given a huge choice of language packs to choose from. All language packs included english too.

[kartalis]

It is really nothing for Nokia.

They already have the language packs ready, they supports almost every language for years now on every phone, their mistake is that they limit those languages for specific product codes on their products. What they need to do is make them available for any phone instead of being product code specific.

They need to release either a Language Pack or make them available from Nokia Software Updater. 

Either way is going to solve a major issue.

BTW is this forum monitored by Nokia? I mean is there any way someone from Nokia see this problem and forward our request to responsible people or department?

[car_guy143]

No it's not monitored by Nokia. You have to contact them directly by clicking on "Contact Us" on the banner at the top of the nokia sites and then click through the options til you find a contact form you can fill out.

Sorry, but it's the only way to make yourself heard to Nokia.

I would also suggest you send them a link to this topic about language packs, maybe then they'll look into it more.

[drewhy]

I fully support this.

[vandelay]

---

kartalis wrote:

BTW is this forum monitored by Nokia? I mean is there any way someone from Nokia see this problem and forward our request to responsible people or department?

---

Hi kartalis,

our moderators read everything that gets posted, and we in the Discussions team do our best to keep the relevant Nokia organizations aware of what's being discussed here. Plenty of Nokia employees around the world also follow this forum daily, many now have an employee status next to their usernames.

If we can find any detailed statements from Nokia about Nokia's current policy regarding language packs, we will post them here.

[sockatume]

I think it's unlikely to change much. The vast majority of Nokia devices, like most mobile phones, are designed for a single region's radio and have only some auxiliary support for other regions. Just as the phones are not truly international devices, nor is their software. If Nokia ever makes a policy of a truly "region free" handset for the international human (they already ship handsets charger-free for eco reasons, so that's not much of a stretch) then we'll get international language packs. Not before.

[pkruger]

---

grschinon wrote:
Full support for a language (ie. being able to use a T9 dictionary and have the phone's menus in that language) can only be achieved by having a Nokia Care Point install the relevant language pack. And yes, I do agree that it's high time this were made available to end users. At least it should be made available for S60 smartphones - it may be easier said than done for S40 devices since only a java virtual machine is exposed to the end-user.

Message Edited by grschinon on 26-May-2009 03:06 PM

---

If Nokia can trust us to do a firmware update, then surely they can trust us to download and install the language of our choice as well? 

[michaels]

In response to the question a few posts ago, Nokia staff from various departments do monitor the board for feedback, though this is not a place where Nokia staff give replies to users' questions. The moderation and administration team also feeds back hot topics to Nokia directly, but again this is only feedback and we don't get feedback on any decisions that might be taken as a result.

The issue of language packs has long been a hot topic amongst users. I can't offer you any insight on whether it will be possible for the end-user to manage languages themselves in the future, but I did find an old reply that our R&D guys offered in response to a question received by Nokia Care from a customer who wanted Russian added to a EURO-variant model:

"It is possible to change the product code i.e. language pack in Nokia Care without affecting the warranty, but the cost of doing this is not under warranty so Care will charge extra cost of this. It also should be possible to purchase the keypads. However these are subject to local country care guidelines and practices may differ also between Care centers. Nokia Flagship store also offer this kind of service, so customers should be able to get their devices from there with any language pack they want and they should also sell different keypads etc."

Unfortunately, as you can see from the text, this depends somewhat on local policies, for example: I know from personal experience that the the Helsinki flagship store does offer the service described above but that the London flagship store does not.