My cell phone can read and write chinese!

I've lately been obsessed with making everything 汉子 capable, that is, able to process, show, and produce chinese characters. For example, just today, I switched from AOL Instant Messenger to Trillian because I can type chinese into the latter and not the former (stupid AOL).

However for the past few weeks, I was obsessed with making my cell phone chinese-capable. Text messaging is a big thing here since it's one of the cheapest forms of communication, but because I brought my cell phone from America, it didn't have the ability to process chinese characters.

So when I received a chinese text, the screen would either display:

Error: Incompatible message format.

or

*&%$@*^^@()#3(

Very annoying. I couldn't even read the SIM card functions in my phone menu. So I was toying with the idea of buying a local cell phone. But while phones here can be very cheap (especially Chinese brands), if I wanted a phone I could take back to North America, I need to purchase a GSM tri-band phone, which runs well over 1000 kuai. Since I had much better things I could spend 120 or so USD on, I kept hesistating about buying a new phone.

Then one day I passed a China Mobile store with sign advertising services such as unlocking phones and updating cell phone software. I went in and asked if they could add chinese capability to my phone... and lo and behold, for a mere 150 kuai (18 USD) I can now text in English and Chinese!