Post v5 versions of Symbian OS use text encoded in the Unicode character set. However, much of the text which might be sent between a Symbian phone and the outside world, e.g. in emails, is encoded in non-Unicode character sets.
The Character Conversion API is provided to enable conversion, in both directions, between Unicode text and other commonly used character sets. It also provides functionality for converting, again in both directions, between ordinary 2-byte Unicode and its two transformation formats.
The following documentation discusses the principles associated with working with the API.