My cell phone has been acting up over the last few days. When I make or receive a call every now and then (not every time), I’m unable to hear the party on the other end of the line - although they can hear me. And since I use the phone primarily for business calls, I sort of need it to not do that.

I was fumbling through the settings, and saw that there was a “master reset” option. That sounded worth a try, so I hit it. After backing up all my settings, numbers, contacts, etc. would be lost, I went ahead and wiped it clean. When it came back up, everything looked good. Good and Chinese.

All the labels and menu options were displayed in Chinese, which I do not understand. I could still recognize the icons, so I hit the “settings” button and tried a few different options, hoping to stumble across the right one. I gave up after 2 minutes.

Then I tried searching online for some help; I figured that I couldn’t be the only one who this had happened to. No luck on the Sony Ericsson website. I did manage to find a phone number for tech support.

I waited on hold for all of 45 seconds before a guy took my call. I explained what happened, he put me on hold for another minute, and came back with the secret code to reset the phone back to english. So, if you’re the proud owner of a Sony Ericsson Z600 who needs this information, here you go:

1. Turn the phone on
2. Press the navigation dial to the left
3. Enter four zeroes (”0000″)
4. Press the nav dial right
5. Wait for the phone to reset

Sort of reminded me of one of those Super Nintendo cheats (up, down, a, a, right)… but it worked.