Converting Chinese HTC Touch Pro to English

WARNING: Changing the firmware on your HTC phone could cause it to become inoperable. A phone with changed firmware may not be eligible for warranty service. Any data on your phone will be erased! Make sure you follow directions carefully and never ever interrupt the firmware update until it is finished. I take no responsibility if this doesn’t work out for you.

So let’s say that you live in Taiwan and want to buy a fancy new HTC Touch Pro smartphone. You’ll quickly learn that in Taiwan you can only find the Chinese version of this phone. Importing a European version is expensive, plus you won’t get any contract signup discounts. US phones use provider-customized firmware that may not work correctly or optimally in Taiwan.

Don’t despair. There’s active communities of HTC enthusiasts who have extracted HTC firmware in English and other languages. It’s a fairly simple process to change the firmware on your phone, but the documentation is slim, so it’s difficult to know where to start. Here’s a simple guide on what you need to do. Each page referenced has additional information if you need more detail:

1 ) Download and install on your computer the English version of ActiveSync from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/help/synchronize/device-synch.mspx

2 ) Turn on your phone and connect the USB cable that came with the phone (aka the charging cable) between your phone and computer and set up the phone to sync. You don’t need to actually sync anything yet, you just need to get ActiveSync on your computer to say it is “Connected”.

3 ) Download to your computer and extract RaphaelHardSPL-Unsigned_1_90_3.zip from here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=410150. Normally you can only install ROM firmware versions intended for your version of the HTC Touch Pro. HardSPL will change the SPL firmware to allow any HTC Touch Pro ROM firmware to be installed.

4 ) Make sure your phone battery is more than 50% charged or the SPL and ROM firmware will not install.

5 ) Run RaphaelHardSPL-Unsigned_190_1_3.exe on your computer. Follow the prompts in the program to start the SPL upgrade. After the upgrade starts there may be an inquiry on your phone’s display asking permission to switch into the bootloader. Press “是” (yes). Do not do anything on your phone or computer until the installer says the process is completed and your phone has restarted. (Note that it says the firmware upgrade takes up the 10 minutes but the SPL is small so it will be much faster.)

6 ) Download to your computer RUU-Raphael-HTC-WWE-1.90.405.1-Radio-Signed-Raphael-CRC-52.33.25.17-1.02.25.19-Ship.exe from http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Raphael_WM6.1_ROMs. At this writing there are newer ROMs there but this one is the stable released version on shipping English phones. (In the future there may be a newer stable release.)

7 ) Run RUU-Raphael-HTC-WWE-1.90.405.1-Radio-Signed-Raphael-CRC-52.33.25.17-1.02.25.19-Ship.exe on your computer. The interface is similar to the SPL upgrade, but this upgrades the main ROM firmware. Again, do not do anything on your phone or computer until the installer says the process is completed and your phone has restarted. This firmware is very large so it will take several minutes.

8 ) When your phone restarts it’ll go through the install process just like a brand new phone. (Your dealer may have done this for you when you bought the phone.) It’ll take several minutes to install the OS and additional software, calibrate the display and setup your phone network settings.

9 ) Congratulations, your Chinese phone now speaks English.

83 thoughts on “Converting Chinese HTC Touch Pro to English”

  2. Hi James,

    1st, great work with your blog.
    Just to make double sure,if i follow the procedure to converse Chinese to English on my Touch Pro, chances are that my warranty would be voided, am I correct? If that’s the case, and let say i need to have my device repaired my device, could I simply make a hard reset to bring OS back to Chinese before i bring to HTC service center?
    Thanks a lot

  3. Hard reset will re-install the currently installed firmware from scratch, not the original firmware. However you could keep a copy of the original firmware for your phone or an official firmware upgrade and put it on in case you need service.

  5. Will this work for a HTC Touch Dual as my brother in law has brought one back from China and I want to convert the language to English.

    Thanks

  8. Hi James, how are you? My name is Steve and I was wondering if you know how to change the Chinese version ROM into the English version ROM for my phone, the HTC Touch HD. I noticed that you know how to change the ROM for the HTC Touch Pro and was wondering if you could change it for the HTC Touch HD. I bought my phone in Hong Kong and would like to know how to change the ROM. I’m a new user so if you could please show me how to change the ROM step by step? Thankyou in advance.

  9. Hi Steve,

    My experience is limited to the Touch Pro. As mentioned above, for other models you will need to go to this page and find your device:

    http://wiki.xda-developers.com/

    The procedures will be similar for different models but the procedure will have some differences for each model and in particular the firmware is unique to each model.

  10. Hi James, my name is Ricky. First of all, great guide you wrote there!! I haven’t tried it yet but i will soon. And i’m also from Taiwan too!

    The thing is, I live in NZ and prefer to use english on my fone. BUT, i still like to use chinese on my fone sometimes. Is there a way to keep both english and chinese on my fone??

    And also, i always like to backup important stuff so how do i backup my chinese firmware? I wanna backup first before i change it to english. I’m sure there is a way since obviously people have found the solution to extract the english rom or firmware and put it on the net for everyone to use. Please help me, thanks in advance 🙂

  12. Hi James, thanks for your reply. I don’t think my phone has the english rom installed, i got it from Taiwan and everything is in chinese. What i’m trying to do is to make the interface english but still able to type chinese characters when using text messaging. So kinda like a hybrid of chinese and english.

    I don’t know much about windows mobile since it’s my first time using it so forgive me for asking some stupid questions, but do you mean that i can simply download the firmware from the official HTC site and keep it as a backup? Because i’ve read guides from other forums and it seems that every phone has their own version and so you have to backup the firmware on your particular phone.

    There’s also something about CDMA and non-CDMA versions as well…….can’t remember really well.

    Lastly, i can’t find your comment from 10/31/2008. And what is CE-STAR?

    Please guide me step by step as i’m a little confused here, thank you.

  13. The previous comment I was referring to is here: http://blog.jameslick.com/?p=1004#comment-22681

    CE-Star is an add-on application for Windows Mobile that allows an English handset to view and enter Chinese Characters. You can find it here: http://www.mobem.com/products/CE-Star.php

    As for the firmware backup, if you want to have a copy of official Chinese firmware to install in case of problems, you can just use the official update available from HTC. Extracting the current firmware from the phone itself is not something I’ve done. Each phone does have specific firmware. On HTC’s site you will have to select the phone model you have. The link in my previous reply is to the current latest Chinese Taiwan firmware for the HTC Touch Pro.

  14. Hi James,

    This blog is really informative. I was wondering if this process applies to Touch Pro 2 as well? I got my phone from Taiwan and wanted it have English language so badly.

    Thanks in advance.

  20. Hi, good that I found this site. I really want to buy a htc touch diamond 2 in Denmark, where I live. But before phurchasing such one, I’d really like to find out whether it is possible to get some sort of file/software to allow me to read and write traditional Chinese. And would I still be able to read/write Danish on the phone after installation? I’d be very very happy, if you would be so kind and guide me through the steps. Must admit, I’m quite unsure about my ability of installing something to my future phone ^^. Extremely afraid of destroying the phone & loose warranty. Thanks.

  21. Carol, To read and write Chinese on a non-Chinese windows mobile phone, buy a copy of CE-Star. That package will keep your Danish interface but allow you to read and write Chinese with it too. I use CE-Star on my phone and am very happy with it. With this program you just need to install one program. No firmware change needed.

  23. Hi James, I took a quick look at CE-star, and seems like it’s pretty reliable.
    What do you think about the free file, one kan download form KUMA studio?
    Another thing about all this being able to read/write Chinese, and the CE-star you recommended, does it only work for mobiles based on wm 5 and 6 plus? Would I be able to do the same if I bought an htc Magic in stead of Touch Diamond 2? Magic’s operating system is based on Android. Could you please advise me on this matter as well? Thanks in advance.

  24. Hi Carol,

    I tried several of the free Chinese packs before buying CE-Star but I found none of them were as easy to use and had all the features of CE-Star. That said, the biggest issue with the free packs I found was poor support of Traditional Chinese. If you are interested in Simplified Chinese then it is worth looking at the free ones. I don’t recall offhand which ones I had reviewed.

    And yes, CE-Star only works on Windows Mobile. I’m not at all familiar with what similar software is available on Android OS.

  25. Thank you so much for your swift reponse, James. Really appreciate. CE-Star will be my 1st choice when I’ve made up my mind which htc phone to buy! In the meanwhile, I’d better check Android OS out and see if I can find someone like you to give such good support 🙂

  29. can someone help me? i cant open the RaphaelHardSPL-Unsigned_190_1_3.exe on my comp. it says that the application cant initialize properly. im dying to convert my htc touch pro to english. can someone help me. pls pls pls.

  30. hey jlick
    can u help me? i cant open RaphaelHardSPL-Unsigned_190_1_3.exe on my comp. it says that the application failed to initialize properly. what will i do? im dying to convert my htc touch pro to english. help me plss. :((

  31. hey james pls help me. i cant open the RaphaelHardSPL-Unsigned_190_1_3.exe on my computer. i cant use my htc touch pro cause the language is french. help me pls. if theres other way to convert it to english?

  32. hello every one i did try the procedure on converting chinese to english and it eraces everything and it stop,….it can not on already….. what should i do?

  33. See if you can force the bootloader: press “volume down” and “power” buttons and “reset” at the same time. If the bootloader comes up then you should be able to try the firmware install again, or try to install the original firmware for your phone (you can download it from HTC). If this still doesn’t help, try asking in the xda-developers.com or ppcgeeks.com forums for help.

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