jodytate/mwf — comment on commit 0faaee0007759a8c0d67e2db1d1371636b3446ee
File:  line 0
By jodytate:

You're right. It might be over-engineering. UTF-8 is pretty much the correct choice to make. UTF-16 may even be "considered harmful":

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/102205/should-utf-16-be-considered-harmful

The .htaccess file solution is a good one and probably a preferred one--seems like that would keep the browser from rummaging through the HTML to find the charset.

No idea how older phones would behave in this instance.

Not sure about old phones.