How to change custom font with Chinese character supported in Symbian S60v3 and S60v5 edition

Whoa, I think this is the longest title I ever had in my entire blog *giggle*.. Ever since I started using Nokia phone in the beginning of this year.. I always wondered how on earth to change the fonts displayed on the interface.. Not to say the default one is ugly but I’m a type of person who prefers something different, fresh and nice to have me keeping the phone I’m using for a longer period =P (I know I’m very lame with this excuse).. Nevertheless, what I said it’s true as I have changed like 4? or 5 phones just in these 8 months *sweat*..

Anyway.. changing the fonts in Symbian OS is always doable and easy for those whose phones don’t support Asia languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese. However, it’s not so fortunate and less time consuming for those Symbian phone owners like me, to have the fonts changed in their phones .. sighzzz… that’s the reason why I haven’t been really digging for more information to get it done few months earlier.. NO TIME and it’s kind of complex for a Symbian newbie like me.. hehe.. pardon me as I was using SE phones all along.. knowing only how to hack UIQ Symbian platform so I need some time to learn up the hacking and modding skill of Nokia Symbian too.

I didn’t really have the intention to publish this post as a tutorial but I found out that there are not many complete and detailed tutorial which will teach us how to change the fonts until the end. Especially those phones which support Unicode characters are even harder as there will be some modding to do with the font’s files beforehand.

So.. as showed below are the successfully font modded snap shots of the screen =) No worries for those users who want to change their phones’ fonts but afraid that boxes will be shown when you read/write Unicode characters like Chinese.

Nokia 5800XM is taken as an example to mod the fonts but I suppose that this method can be applied to all Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition but a little difference on the naming of the fonts.

What do I need first?

• A data cable / memory card reader
• A custom Truetype font which ends with .ttf file format (Comic Sans MS, Calibri, Times New Roman, etc) or you can obtain them free from here
• A copy of Font Creator software. In this case, I used High Logic FontCreator
• Original Nokia 5800XM fonts. Download here.
  • Note: For other models, you can either download it through Google or use Lonely Cat Games X-plore to copy out the original fonts from Z:\Resource\Fonts

Important step not to miss (To use the correct file names that support your phone)

Note: Lonely Cat Games X-plore is needed to proceed and you might need HelloOx 1.3 or other higher version to continue for the unsigned sis file of X-plore you obtain from Google.

• Write down/copy the names of the files inside of the Fonts’ folder in Z:\Resource\Fonts using X-plore (different firmware uses different font’s name. In my case, it will be S60SC_C.ttf, S60TCHK_C.ttf and S60ZDIGI.ttf for Nokia 5800XM firmware version v21 and v30.)

You have to check ’show hidden files’, ’system’s folders’, ’show ROM files’ and ’show RAM files’  option in X-plore’s configuration menu in order display the ‘Z’ drive to proceed.

Steps to change your phone’s fonts

• Use the font creator software to open the custom font you have chosen and the original Nokia font of your phone (eg: Comic Sans MS)

• Select on any character on the custom font file, select all (Ctrl + A) and copy it (Ctrl + C or Edit –> Copy)
• On the Original font file – S60SC_C.ttf, scroll down until you find the exclaimation mark “!”.  Select Edit –> Paste Special and follow the options checked on the following image.
  

• Since the original font file has so many characters, give it some time to process.
• Save it as S60SC_C.ttf in a new folder named ‘Fonts’.
• Repeat the same steps for the S60TCHK_C.ttf file. It looks like the same but indeed, it contains different characters from the s60SC_C.ttf file.
• Again, save it as S60TCHK_C.ttf in the ‘Fonts’ folder.
• As for S60ZDIGI.ttf font type, you can use the original font file without any modding. Just copy and paste another copy to the ‘Fonts’ folder.
• Now, you have 3 files in your ‘Fonts’ folder. Connect your phone to PC with data cable or use memory card reader.
• Select ‘Mass Storage’ in the menu
• Open your memory card window and look for ‘Resource’ Folder (E:\Resource)
• Copy the ‘Fonts’ folder and put into the ‘Resource’ Folder.
• Restart your phone and hooray….. the font is changed!!!

The Don’ts

• Don’t MOVE or ERASE the fonts in Z drive. Otherwise, you will have a headache of trying to fix the problems! Leave it there although you have another set of fonts in the E drive (memory card)

How to restore to the original font?

• Just delete the ‘Fonts’ folder in your memory card (E:\Resource) and restart your phone. It should be back to the default one.

FAQ
1) Why do I need this tutorial again?
Basically for those who want to merge their custom font to enable Chinese/Japanese/Russian character support on their Nokia 5800 (or any other phones for that matter)

2) Why copy from the custom font to the original and not the other way around?
Because the original file has about  30,000 glyphs (characters) and if you copy it over the software will crash.

3) Why do I need to start pasting only after the ‘exclaimation’?
Because if you paste any earlier than that, it might overwrite the special wingding characters such as the ‘arrows’ and the ‘circle with dot’.. etc

***** All credits go to Ignati.com and Dailymobile Forum *****

That’s all folks = ) Hope these steps made your life easier with your phone. Any question just leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Also, tell if it works for you = )