今天我遇到了联想手机的一个很麻烦的问题。我试着安装一个JAVA程序的时候突然有一个消息说『安装数量超过上限』。碰到这个问题后，我马上上网，开始找怎么才能解决这个问题。手机的型号是『联想P609』，而好像比较多联想手机都有那个问题。有的人说这个问题是系统的缺陷，有的人说这个限制是故意的。我找了很长时间，但是所有的答案都看起来比较复杂。一个方法是删除手机里面的cookies（信息记录程序），但是怎么做我也不清楚。况且，有时候用什么不正式的软件改变手机的数据可能破坏手机的系统。幸运的，我的朋友推荐我先备份个人的数据（电话簿、短信等），然后恢复出厂设置。他说的对，恢复出厂设置以后再要安装所有的JAVA程序，但是上面提到的那个限制已经没有了。

谢谢小杨！

I’ve encountered a very annoying bug on my new Lenovo P609 phone today which relates to the number of Java programmes that can be installed. I am not sure about the number of Lenovo’s non-Chinese-speaking customers but I thought I’d share my thoughts on the solution so other people won’t have to go through the same trouble as me. Apparently, some Lenovo models (and a limited number of mobiles from other companies) seem to be suffering from a bug which displays a message “Java installation limit reached” when trying to install new Java programmes after a certain period of time. Chinese websites suggest various measures, e.g. deleting the phone’s internal cookies. But using third-party software to make changes to the phone bears the danger of rendering your phone inoperable. Luckily, a friend of mine gave me a hint: what you need to do is to backup your personal data (phone book, SMS etc.) and revert all settings to factory default afterwards. You will have to reinstall all your Java applications, but the annoying nag screen will be gone.

For me as a European, I was baffled to find that there are so-called “Dual SIM phones” available in China — no-name mobile phones produced by lesser-known Chinese companies that can hold two (or more) SIM cards at the same time. Now, that alone is not surprising — Dual SIM adapters have been available in Europe for some time, too, allowing users to put two SIMs in their phone and switch between them as needed. What is surprising, however, is the fact that there are mobile phones available here that can use both SIM cards at the same time.

In China, unlike Europe, it’s not calling from one provider’s network to another that makes calls expensive. In China, geographical distance makes the difference. China alone is as large as the whole of Europe — and travelling between provinces could be compared to international roaming in Western countries. Every province has its own China Mobile branch and you get charged more while travelling and for calling people in other provinces (see this post). If you frequently travel to another province, it is therefore common to buy a new SIM card from that province’s China Mobile branch, in order to keep calling costs down. But this means that you have to leave your original SIM behind, if you don’t want to carry two mobile phones.

To alleviate this problem, Dual SIM phones have been invented. Generally, there are two types of Dual SIM phones: Single Dual SIM phones 双卡单待 (shuāngkǎ dāndài) and Twin Dual SIM phones 双卡双待 (shuāngkǎ shuāngdài). Both types can hold two SIM cards. Single Dual SIM phones only allow for one SIM to be active/online at a time, though, just like the adapters mentioned above, whereas Twin Dual SIM phones allow for both SIM to be online at the same time. There are also phones that have three or more SIM card slots (a number that could be increased even further, theoretically, using extra Dual SIM adapters), allowing you to select two SIM cards to go online every time you power on your cell. The price you pay for this “luxury” is, of course, a reduced battery life, since such a mobile phone needs two antennas and two receivers.

Dual SIM phones are uncommon and mostly unheard-of in Western countries. In Germany, for example, phones are usually bought at a reduced price when signing up for a (generally two-year) cellphone contract. Network operators are not interested in letting you use other operator’s SIM cards at the same time and mobile phone producers somewhat depend on network operators to have them sell their phones with the contracts. Except for a few prototypes and some Samsung handsets, no major company has had the courage to release that type of phone on Western markets at a reasonable price. So here is the dead end. People more tech-savvy, however, have picked up the subject and Dual SIM phones start spreading in small numbers.

All Chinese Dual SIM phones can be used in Europe without modifications and some can be used in the Americas too. Since I needed a new cellphone anyway, I chose a Dual SIM handset, of course. My requirements were: Bluetooth (蓝牙), Java support (JAVA功能), touchscreen/pen (用手输入字), English-Chinese dictionary (英汉词典) — for me personally, the phone needed to double as a means of studying. I chose the K-Touch C350, coming at 1.350 CNY (roughly 150 EUR at the moment), but available cheaper (around 1.000 CNY) from Internet stores now. Contrary to expectations, most Dual SIM phones are not expensive. Since they are produced mainly by small(er) Chinese companies, they are even cheaper than Single SIM phones carrying big companies. While the label “Made in China” has, to some degree, gotten rid of its bad image, it remains to be seen if the assemblage quality will be an issue.

Pros & Cons

The biggest pro of this cellphone is, unsurprisingly, its Dual SIM capability. It doesn’t only make calling people cheaper, it also means you enjoy broader network coverage, and if you run out of money on one SIM, you will still be able to call people using your second SIM. This feature will be of even greater use when back in Europe, where you could theoretically combine a SIM with cheap calling rates with another SIM offering cheap rates for data transfer. The reception is not affected by the fact that the handset has two receivers — the signal (信号) is about the same as with my previous mobile phones, sometimes even a little better. Speech quality is not as good, though, but this could be related to an inferior decompression algorithm and doesn’t necessarily have to be connected to the two antennas. As mentioned above, the Dual SIM option comes at a price: battery life is reduced by about a third when both SIMs are used. The C350 comes with two 1200 mAh batteries, which may be a lot for a normal cellphone, but not for a Dual SIM model. Typically, the battery lasts around four days with one active SIM and around 2-3 days with two active SIMs, depending on your usage profile — how many calls you make a day, if you use Java a lot etc.

The second big pro of this cell is the handwriting capability and the pen. For me, as a student of the Chinese language, it’s a huge problem that I never really get to write enough characters 汉字 in today’s modern world, so I only remember them passively (I recognize them, but I cannot write them). The C350 helps a lot here. The handwriting recognition is fast and accurate. A lot better than most electronic dictionaries I’ve come across and better than Window’s IME pad. Yet, the downside here is that I can’t use handwriting in Java mode — and since the dictionary in my cellphone is a Java dictionary, I will still have a hard time looking up characters and can’t enjoy the benefits of handwriting recognition there. I wonder why dictionaries aren’t build directly into these cellphones. I’ll write more on the issue in a later post.

The C350 is one of the very little Dual SIM phones that has both Java and Bluetooth. Although Java is not as handy as necessary, it is still a very welcome function, as it allows for various dictionaries and other software, such as vocabulary trainers, to be installed. Bluetooth is also very useful, but suffers from the same problems as most Bluetooth-enabled handheld devices: limited interoperability. Not all Bluetooth services can be used between mobile phones and it gets even more complicated when trying to connect the C350 to your computer. This depends on the hardware you’re using, though, and is a general deficit of the Bluetooth technology.

A controversial issue for many potential customers will be the menu design. In terms of colours and icon design, the menu is extremely childish, sometimes up to the point of plain ugliness. Nevertheless, this is only a matter of personal taste and where the menu might seem unlogical at first, it soon becomes clear that this is just a different way of doing things — after all, you’re holding a Chinese cellphone in your hands The only major flaw I’ve encountered is the camera software, which sometimes crashes and sometimes can’t access the memory card (microSD). Apart from that, the menu is fast and easy to get used to. In many regards, the phone is even superior the other mobiles I’ve been using before: when connecting it to a computer, it doubles as a “mass storage device” (like an external hard drive, U盘) and doesn’t require you to install buggy drivers and buggy synchronisation software. Also, the phone has a “flight mode”, allowing you to turn both of the phone’s antennas off, so you can continue using it while on a plane. In many ways, the C350 feels like a small PDA.

The C350 may not be the world’s most beautiful phone, but it is a solid piece of hardware and still quite small for a Dual SIM phone with so many capabilities. The case gives me a good impression. Many parts are made of metal instead of plastic, the screen doesn’t scratch easily and the buttons react quickly and accurately. But after two weeks of using the C350, its weaknesses become more and more apparent, too. T9 mode is extremely slow — incomprehensible, since the phone’s CPU seems to be quite fast, processing handwriting at a fast pace and running most Java applications at full speed. This is not as bad, since you can use the on-screen keyboard with the phone’s pen and write SMS even faster than before. But this requires two hands … Also, the Chinese T9 is a bit difficult to get used to and there are no Umlaute (ä, ö, ü). The phone can obviously display them, but there is no way of entering them.

Furtheremore, there is no way of recording videos. This is surprising, too, since the phone has a media player, a camera and, as mentioned above, a fast CPU. I hope there will be an update of the operating system in the future that tackes these problems. The phones 5MP camera is not the world’s best, but does it’s job well. The built-in flash helps a lot. Even though it’s by no means comparable to a real digital camera, it’s fine for occasional snapshots. Here are some samples: sample 01, sample 02, sample 03.

Setup

For those who call a C350 their own, there are some things you should consider when setting up your cellphone or connecting it to your computer. Drivers are available on the K-Touch homepage (> Chinese, > English), but no drivers are needed for basic file exchange. The drivers are only necessary if you want to use your phone as a modem and can also be found on the phone’s memory card. However, before connecting your phone to your computer, there are some very important preparations to make.

I was surprised to find, that, as soon as I connected the C350 via USB for the first time, Kaspersky Anti-Virus came up right away, telling me about a virus in the root folder of the phone’s memory card. The affected file was a hidden Windows .exe file and would have been automatically executed (and installed), had I not turned Windows XP’s Autoplay feature off. Now, I don’t believe that K-Touch is actively shipping their phones with computer viruses, targeted to infect their customer’s systems, but you can never tell who programmed the software and what components it is using. In fact, consciousness of computer viruses is not very developed here in China. Wherever you take your USB stick to exchange data (work, friends’ places, copy shops), there is a strong possibility that there will be at least one or another type of malware on your USB bar when you get back home. Last time I’ve been to the most expensive copy shop on Jiaotong University’s Xuhui Campus, when I got back home, I found that there were three new files without names on my USB bar, looking like Windows folders. People who haven’t set Windows to display file extensions would have probably double-clicked these “folders” to check what they are about, installing some kind of malicious software. Usually these files install all by themselves as soon as you connect your USB bar to your computer, thanks to Windows’ Autoplay feature.

In any way, Windows’ Autoplay is one of the system’s most dangerous features. A Sony BMG CD once used Autoplay to install a rootkit (something worse than a virus) on my computer, that prevented me from playing Audio CDs on my computer. Autoplay should be turned off on any account: Start –> Run: gpedit.msc –> Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System, set the item “Turn off autoplay” to “Enabled” for “All drives”. After you’ve done that, keep Kaspersky on alert, connect your C350 and make sure you delete all files (including hidden files) in the memory card’s root folder. I’m not sure what this “virus” was supposed to do, but the lack of it definitively doesn’t affect your ability to browse the phone’s memory.

Mini Battery Chargers 手机应急充

As a general means to increase battery lifetime, I suggest people set the phone’s LCD brightness to “3″, instead of the default “4″: Menu –> Settings –> Phone Settings –> Other Settings –> LCD Brightness. Also, make sure you use both batteries that come with the C350 equally — i.e. keep both batteries charged and switch between them on a weekly basis or when needed. Also, you should try and only start charging your phone when the battery power has been completely used up. After that, charge it until the battery is on 100% again. This will increase the batteries’ lifetime. However you put it, there is no way of hiding that this phone still needs a huge amount of power, so I suggest that you buy a “mobile battery charger”, available at convenience stores (e.g. C-Store) and electronics stores. These are usually around 30-40 CNY (about 5 EUR) and allow you to use normal AA batteries to charge your phone while on the go. They can be used with the C350’s USB cable. That will ensure you won’t run out of power, in case of an emergency. Cheaper mobile chargers (10-20 CNY) are available from street peddlers at metro stations, but I’m not sure if these will work at all.

Conclusion

So far, the K-Touch C350 gives me a good impression. Except for a few small nuisances, it’s a solid phone and definitely has a lot of advantages over traditional mobile phones manufactured by Western and Japanese companies. It will take time to see if quality concerns and the battery issue will become a bigger problem in the future. Also, I’m not sure if the increased radiation (due to the two antennas) could cause health problems for people sensitive to these things

Update (2009/01/30): I have been using the C350 for about a month and a half now and there are positive and negative things I would like to add. I will keep this short summary telegram-style, as not to make this post too long The battery issue turned out not to be too much of a problem. Even though I have the C350 running on Dual SIM mode, the battery lasts 4-5 days now. But I do turn the handset off at night. Unfortunately, I discovered that the phone can only display Simplified Characters 简体字, but no Traditional Characters 繁体字 at all. This is not only a problem of the C350 but of phones produced in Mainland China in general. Handsets of Gionee, Lenovo or Hantel don’t support Traditional Characters either. The C350 can, however, display Japanese Hiragana ひらがな and Katakana カタカナ. Something that really disappointed me is the lack of video recording support. This really kind-of spoils the impression of the whole phone as a versatile business tool.

The most important news is, though: there is an open source Java dictionary called DictionaryForMIDs, which is able to make use of the phone’s handwriting capability, despite the fact that itself is a Java application. The trick is that, to enter the word you want to have translated, the dictionary calls up the phone’s internal editor. You click the input box and you’ll be presented with a screen that looks similar to the one where you enter short messages. DictionaryForMIDs itself is only a dictionary framework, an application. You need to install a dictionary yourself (a lot of work) or download an edition that comes pre-installed with a dictionary. Currently there is one English-Chinese-English (based on CEDICT) dictionary and a Germany-Chinese-German (based on HanDeDict) dictionary. Yet the most recent versions don’t seem to work properly on the C350. Translation works occasionally at best and there are constantly errors or exceptions. Older versions of the CEDICT dictionary work, though. Although they may not be as complete as newer versions.

Update (2009/05/21): After about half a year of using the C350, I want to offer a few more suggestions on a few bugs I found. Sometimes after taking a photo, the phone would show a message “SD error” SD错误. This seems to be related to a bug of the phone’s OS and can be circumvented by calling up the phone’s file manager and opening a random folder or file on the card. You should also consider replacing the standard SD card which came with the phone, as these are usually the cheapest and least reliable models. Another bug I found quite annoying relates to the phone’s on-screen keyboard when putting in Chinese text. The phone’s on-screen keyboard is actually quite handy here, because it works similar to the Input Method Editor on your computer. You type “shifu” and the phone will show you a list of candidates, e.g. 师傅, 师父, 市府 and so on. However, the problem with the C350 is that, when you open the text editor and start typing using the on-screen keyboard, the candidate list will appear on top of the keyboard, basically rendering this function useless. The only way to get around this issue I found was to switch through all the different input modes after you open the editor. Quite inconvenient, but still … that would be the Chinese way of making things do 凑合

Updates (2009/08/28): One more annoying bug I’ve found: seems the C350 can only hold up to 50 tasks/appointments, which is a ridiculously small number. That way you won’t even have enough memory to save your best friend’s birthdays. If the phone saved all entries on the SD card that would allow for virtually unlimited tasks. A limit of 50 tasks is very unnecessary and disqualifies the C350 as a serious business tool. But what can you expect at that price …

Alternatives

As I have no means to compare this cellphone to other Twin Dual SIM phones, I would like to name a few phones with similar features: the Gionee 金立 V8200 is the most impressive Twin Dual SIM phone I’ve come across, offering the same features as the C350, but also a TV and radio receiver as well as stock trading software at a slightly higher price (around 1.700-1.800 CNY as far as I can recall). It’s sold out in most places though. People who don’t need Java might find the Gionee 金立 A2 (around 1.000 CNY) attractive. It’s certainly the flattest Dual SIM phone I’ve seen so far — one of the most good-looking, in my opinion. The Hantel 汉泰 HT6000 has about the same features as the K-Touch C3500 for roughly 1.000 CNY. Eventually, there is also an iPhone clone available here in China, which doesn’t have Java but Twin Dual SIM capability. I stongly advise people not to buy this phone, though, as speech quality is very low and the phone is cheaply manufactured. Stick to the C350 instead, it’s worth it

A not-so-well-known and very peculiar item on the video game market is the so-called “iQue Player“, a Chinese version of the Nintendo 64. When the Nintendo 64 had already been abandoned in favour of the Gamecube in Western markets and Japan, Nintendo decided to re-release the system in China around 2003 — at a time when the Chinese economic reform 改革开放 was fully underway, China had joined the WTO and companies around the world were exploring business opportunities in the Middle Kingdom. The Chinese people were starting to make money and selling video games in China became profitable.

Nintendo didn’t want to be left out and set up iQue 神游科技(中国)有限公司 (lit. “Shenyou Technologies Ltd.”), a Suzhou-based Joint Venture with a Chinese company, to produce the iQue Player, a system based on the Nintendo 64 which uses System-on-chip technology — i.e. the whole Nintendo 64 has been reduced in size to fit on a single chip that rests in the controller. The controller itself connects directly to the TV. Games are stored on a quite small (size- and memory-wise) 64MB memory card (divided into 250 so-called “blocks” 格), which, by default, contains a full version of Dr. Mario 马力欧医生 and time-limited demo versions of Super Mario 64 神游马力欧, Zelda: Ocarina of Time 塞尔达传说-时光之笛, Wave Race 水上摩托 and Starfox 星际火狐. A dozen first party games are available for the system and can be downloaded to the memory card from iQue Depots 加油站 (lit. “charging station”) or via USB from the Internet at 48 Yuan a game. The motivation for chosing this hardware architecture has clearly been the problem of piracy. The Chinese have always been clever at circumvention copyright protection mechanisms. Cartridges didn’t keep them from doing their business: China was the place of origin of the Doctor V64, a Video CD player that was able to copy and run Nintendo 64 games from CD. By selling outdated but attractive games at a low price, Nintendo hoped to deter piracy.

List of games available for the iQue player:

• Super Mario 64 神游马力欧 (31 blocks, game ID: 10011)
• Wave Race 水上摩托 (32 blocks, game ID: 51011)
• Mario Kart 64 马力欧卡丁车 (48 blocks, game ID: 52011)
• Dr. Mario 马力欧医生 (13 blocks, game ID: 61011)
• Starfox 星际火狐 (46 blocks, game ID: 41011)
• Yoshi’s Story 耀西故事 (68 blocks, game ID: 11021)
• F-Zero X 未来赛车 (63 blocks, game ID: 52021)
• Zelda: Ocarina of Time 塞尔达传说-时光之笛-
  (114 blocks, game ID: 21011)
• Super Smash Bros. 任天堂明星大乱斗
  (65 blocks, game ID: 12021)
• Paper Mario 纸片马力欧 (160 blocks, game ID: 21021)
• Excitebike 64 越野摩托 (62 blocks, game ID: 51021)
• Animal Crossing 动物森林 (62 blocks, game ID: 21041)
• Sin and Punishment 罪与罚-地球的继承者-
  (129 blocks, game ID: 41021)
• Custom Robo 组合机器人 (65 blocks, game ID: 21051)

What makes the system interesting for European gamers is that Custom Robo and – until the advent of the Wii’s virtual console – Sin and Punishment were Japan-exclusive releases for the Nintendo 64. I personally found Paper Mario and Animal Crossing very attractive as well, since these two games had been released around the end of the N64’s lifespan and therefore have not received much coverage by the media and are hard to get these days. Although the iQue Player is a ’small Nintendo 64′, it differs a little from the original machine and games need to be specifically ported to the system, giving them a slightly different look, sound and feel when compared to the originals. That being said, I was still surprised people didn’t try to hack it and make it run ROM images or make the games available on the internet. Even ROMs of 64DD games – a system arguably even less widely distributed than the iQue – have been released already, so it’s indeed confusing nobody tried to take advantage of the iQue’s unique architecture and easy access to its hardware.

Getting an iQue Player and Setting it up

My days of video gaming have long since passed. But having read about the iQue before, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to explore the system myself while in China. Especially since a number of games have been released for the iQue that used to be Japan-only titles back in Nintendo 64 days, like Sin and Punishment 罪与罚-地球的继承者 and Custom Robo 组合机器人. After all, this is not about playing video games but about cultural experience And as little people know, all games available for the iQue have been localized for the Chinese market, which means that all in-game dialogues translated into Chinese, including the voice acting in games like Starfox. Surprising if you consider that localizing wasn’t a very common thing in the era of fifth-generation video game systems.

With the economic crisis at its height, I figured department stores would give me a good deal on the system. Wrong. Xujiahui’s Pacific Department Store 太平洋百货 wanted 498 Yuan for the system. The same price the system used to cost when it was released five years ago. Since China’s generation of gamers has long since moved on to more sophisticated systems like the Wii or the PSP, I figured I could find a better deal on Taobao.com, the Chinese version of eBay and found a brand-new system for around half the price.

It took me a while to figure out how the iQue worked. The system runs on 220V/50Hz, the same power frequency as the rest of China and Europe (Japan and the USA use 110/60Hz). It is surprising, though, that while Chinese television uses the European 50Hz PAL system, the iQue’s output signal is 60Hz NTSC, the American standard. This is strange because TV signals usually run on the same frequency as power grids, but might be connected to the fact that the Nintendo 64’s PAL conversions were usually of very poor quality, running at lower speed and lower resolutions than their NTSC counterparts. I was fortunate to find that the TV I am using supports NTSC signals, but I am not sure if this is the case with most TV sets in mainland China. It might have affected sales, but the system never really took off anyway and plans for it to be released in other Asian markets have been abandoned.

Buying Games from iQue Depots

As mentioned above, games can be downloaded to the system’s memory card from iQue Depots, called 加油站. These can be found in most major first-tier cities thoughout China, a list being available on the iQue homepage. Those who think about getting an iQue for nostalgic reasons should hurry though. I noticed that most of these stations are being removed. Mainly because the industry is moving on but also because games can be downloaded from the Internet now too.

The following is a list of iQue Depots in Shanghai:

I personally found the nice Fuwuyuan (服务员, fúwùyuán n. clerk, service personnel) in the Jiuguang Department Store 久光百货 next to Jing’an Temple 静安寺 most helpful Downloading games to your iQue memory card 神游卡 works as follows: You connect your memory card to the iQue depot and wait for the menu to come up. You will be presented with an overview of what is already on your card and how much memory is left. Unfortunately, all the memory is used by the games and demos by default, with Zelda taking up roughly half of the memory. You will have no choice to either delete some demos or upgrade them to full games. This is definitely a weak point of the system, since iQue memory cards cannot be bought separately, except for a few used ones from Taobao. And I am not sure if memory cards from one iQue Player can be used on another one — I could imagine that games will be locked to the first iQue player running it.

The option to download games from the Internet has alleviated this issue a little, since the system retains a record of games that have been bought. So even if you delete the full version of Dr. Mario, you will be able to download it for free again from iQue depots or the Internet at a later time. Another advantage of this system is that demo versions of games are easy to come by, which wasn’t the case in times of large, expensive, difficult to produce game cartridges.

After having chosen a game, the iQue depot asks you to swipe an iQue ticket 神游票, available at 48 Yuan, to certify that you have paid for the game. Scrap off the cover to see the bar code and swipe the card through the card reader. Downloading the game to the memory card takes a while. When the process is finished, you will be taken back to the main screen to choose a new game or to log out. Keep the iQue ticket as a memory

Connecting to the Internet

Later during the iQue’s short lifespan, the iQue online service “iQue@Home” 神游在线 was launched. This service is supposed to enable users to download games and demos from the Internet rather than through iQue depots. A detailed manual on how to do this is available on the iQue homepage (in Chinese). According to the iQue@Home homepage, this connection was also supposed to enable people to participate in long-distance competitions with other players, chat and compare their scores online. Since the status of these items is still on “to be released soon” 即将推出, I suppose these features won’t see the dailight anymore — a fate the iQue player shares with other Nintendo systems like the 64DD or Satellaview.

At first, I wasn’t able get the software to do much more than browse the memory card’s contents, since it couldn’t connect to the Internet for some reason. But thanks to the extremely quick and helpful iQue Customer Service, it was possible to single out the poor Internet connection at Jiaotong University as the reason The software uses two non-standard ports, 16976 and 16977, so make sure you open these before proceeding.

According to the manual, the oldest iQue players don’t support connecting to the Internet, but this is merely a problem of an outdated operating system. Start your player and check if the system menu has a coloured text string in the upper left corner that reads 神游在线. If it doesn’t, head over to the next iQue Depot and upgrade your operating system (“UOS”) to the latest version.

Before connecting the player to your computer, download the iQue@Home software from http://www.game.ique.com. This is the standard version (简易版, 1.2MB), to find the full version (完整版, 205MB), go to http://www.ique.com/M_athome.htm and click the second link “完整版205M” (compressed WinRAR archives). I’m not exactly sure what the difference between these two is. But given the size of the second package, it may very well be that it contains encrypted/compressed images of the games, saving you the trouble to download them from the internet every time you just want to move games back and forth between the card and your computer. The item “Game data” in the installation dialogue supports this guess. It’s just speculation, though.

To connect the iQue player to the computer, a simple USB cable that fits the plug on the iQue controller is needed. I’m not sure what these cables are called, but it’s the same type of plug that most digital cameras use these days. Connect your player and wait for the Windows device manager dialogue to pop up, asking you what to do next. Tell it to install the software automatically. After that, run the iQue@Home software and run the update when asked. Please note that the software was designed for a Chinese environment, so it may be best to change your operating system’s codepage to Chinese or use Microsoft’s Applocale utility, which allows you to run non-Unicode applications in your own locale. It’s available for download on Microsoft’s homepage and a detailed tutorial on how to use it can be found here. Use Applocale to run “C:\Program Files\iQue@home\pkgs\update\Update.exe” with the argument “launch” and set the programme language to Simplified Chinese 中文(简体).

Wait for the application to connect, afterwards you will be taken to the software’s main screen, which has three links — to buy games 购买游戏, to browse the memory card 游戏存取 and to join the iQue Club 神游俱乐部. If the link to buy games and to join the iQue Club are greyed out, the software wasn’t able to connect. Check the connection to the iQue player, reconnect to the Internet, relaunch the application and make sure ports 16976 and 16977 are open for the software. If all that doesn’t work, have a look at the programme’s log files, which are stored at “C:\Program Files\iQue@home\data\logs”, or ask the iQue Customer Service (Chinese) about the problem.

Click the link at the very top to buy games, download demos or download game manuals. You will be shown a list of games to choose from. After selecting a game, you will be taken to the game’s info page, which contains a decription of the game and information about how much memory it requires. Click 我要试玩 to download a demo version or 下载指南 to download the game manual. To download a full game, you need to have a 48 Yuan iQue ticket 神游票 available. Uncover the passwort on the backside of the card and enter it on the game’s info page, afterwards click 我要购买. Afterwards, the items you chose will be transferred to your memory card. When the transfer has succeeded, go back to the homepage (click 首页 in the upper left corner) and click the second link to check the memory card’s contents.

The third link on the home page takes you to the registration page of the iQue Club. I’m not sure what this club is used for exactly — and since Christmas time is the busiest time of the year (even in Shanghai ), I’m not sure when I will be able to check up on this. I’ll definitely post the information here as soon as I find out. Consider this tutorial a work in progress — suggestions are very welcome

Comments (26-08-2009): One user asked about upgrading the iQue player’s operating system (UOS升级系统). I would be glad to give a few clues on that, but the iQue Homepage is inaccessible at the moment — at least from outside China. From what I can gather from a Google cache link to the former website (http://www.ique.com/Player_upgrade.htm), you need to upgrade the UOS operating system at an iQue depot and purchase a so-called “charging pack” 加油装, containing a USB cable and a CD with the iQue@Home software to go online. Technically, though, any standard USB cable that fits the player’s port will do, but given the lack of iQue depots and since the iQue website seems to be offline, I am not sure there is still a way to upgrade the player now.

It has been quiet around the original iQue player for a while now, but that is just reasonable. When Nintendo started selling the iQue to Chinese customers they made a mistake many companies made at that time: they sold outdated hardware to customers who grew increasingly more confident and didn’t like to be sold second-class products. Given that, it comes as no surprise that the iQue player pretty much failed in China, at least when compared to the success of the DS, the PSP or the Wii.

Comments (27-08-2009): iQue homepage is back online. Seems it was a temporary problem.