Being connected has become such a part of our daily routine that it is unheard of to not check email, send a social network update, or edit a document in the cloud wherever we find ourselves. And given the increase in Wi-Fi hotspots, one could live ‘always on’ without too much effort.

“Companies see improvements in productivity when employees are able to work remotely and access the corporate network while travelling,” says Mike van Lier, Business Leader for IT Solutions at Samsung Electronics South Africa. “These employees can provide live feedback from the field to ensure that data is always relevant and all internal stakeholders know exactly what the latest developments are. What’s more, mobile data rates have become more competitive to provide business users and consumers with affordable options when it comes to the connected experience.” (more…)

Vodacom launched integrated Smart and Red packages in March this year, offering customers  voice, data and SMS in one combined package at a fixed price aiming for an uncomplicated smartphone experience and predictable billing.

Vodacom has now taken this one step further and upgraded the data and SMS allowances for all current customers on these packages. The Smart Small data allowance has increased from 75MB to 200MB, the Medium has increased from 120MB to 300MB and the Large and Extra-Large allowances have doubled. The Red Advantage plan has increased from 700Mb to 1Gb, the Premium from 1.2Gb to 1.6Gb and the flagship VIP plan with limitless talk time has grown from 1.5Gb to 2.0GB

The new allowances will kick-in for both new and all existing Smart and Red customers from 1 June 2013 and will be valid for the remainder of their contracts.

Speaking about this, Chief Officer of the Consumer Business Unit Phil Patel said, ”We wanted to reward the early adopters who have bought into our new integrated plan concept. Not only are our packages worry free, we’ve even managed to do something few mobile networks have been able to do and give our customers a positive surprise.”

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Thanks to NATIVE’s new Mxit app, bookly, author Fiona Snyckers can now launch her book to an audience of 7.3 million monthly active users and do it three weeks before the real-world launch in bookstores.

bookly is the most sophisticated e-reader app available on the Mxit platform.  NATIVE began developing the app in early 2013, and was eager to bring suitable partners on board as quickly as possible. Publishers Random House Struik and Modjaji Books stepped up as partners creating an appropriate focus on serialised South African novels.

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Google’s messaging systems have quickly become a mess – with the launch of Google Chat a decade ago they had a pretty decent headstart. But they quickly branched out into different channels with the launch of Google Voice, and later the Hangouts feature in Google+.

Google Talk was luckily built on the Jabber standard until now, meaning that you could quite easily integrate it with many different clients across many platforms. But Google never launched an official Google Chat client outside Android – until now. The new Google Hangouts app is meant to bring Talk, Hangouts video chat and Google Voice together into one product.

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Universal access to the internet in South Africa is no longer being held back by high prices or a lack of education, but by government and regulatory inefficiency. Smartphones and mobile computing devices are getting cheaper and broadband far more affordable. But the spectrum needed to deliver high-speed bandwidth is still clogged up by the government’s frustrating delay in switching TV broadcasts from analogue to more efficient digital signals, says Mark Taylor, CEO for Nashua Mobile.

“We are at a juncture where technology developments have outpaced our regulations. The freeing up of spectrum through the digitisation of TV signals is lagging behind, and has serious implications for our operators remaining on the forefront of offering the latest technologies to South Africa.” Network operators are introducing the latest LTE wireless technology for high-speed, high-capacity data, but they cannot set up national LTE networks because spectrum is not available. “It’s critical that we see the delivery of additional spectrum quickly to remain globally competitive, otherwise South Africa will fall further behind in the broadband divide,” Taylor warns. “Universal access to broadband is starting to border on a human right. We can’t deliver that because TV channels are still using the spectrum, so digital migration must be finalised.” (more…)

Nokia today introduced the Nokia Lumia 925, a new interpretation of its award-winning flagship, the Nokia Lumia 920 (one of our favourite phones of 2012). The Nokia Lumia 925 introduces a metal design and showcases the latest PureView camera innovation, new features and third party applications coming to the Nokia Lumia range.

The Nokia Lumia 925 includes the most advanced lens technology and next generation imaging software to capture clearer, sharper pictures and video, including the best low light images. The Nokia Lumia 925 also introduces the new Nokia Smart Camera mode, coming as an update to all Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphones. Nokia Smart Camera offers an easy way to capture ten images at once and edit the pictures with options like Best Shot, Action Shot, and Motion Focus for creating better images. (more…)

Sony has officially announced the Sony Xperia ZR, a new Android smartphone that follows the release of the Xperia Z (Read the review here), hailed for its water-resistant technology.

Sony has taken its water-resistance technology up a notch  with the new device, allowing for photographs and video footage to be captured, with a dedicated camera button, in up to 1.5 meters of water – that’s fresh rather than salt. This is possible with a 13 megapixel fast capture camera and 4.6-inch HD Reality display. 

Other specs of the 4.6-inch, 720p smartphone include a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quadcore 1.5 GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, 4G LTE NFC support, Sony’s Walkman album and movie apps.

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Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 928 that will become available in the US from Verizon (no surprises here)  on the 16th May. Nokia will continue to reveal more information about its latest smartphone at an event in London on the 14th May.

Leading up to this much anticipated event, Nokia has released a teaser advertisement for the upcoming device on television sets in the UK.  The 20 second promo shows fairly abstract images of the handset as well as the camera lens.

Until recently Nokia had been teasing the flagship device for some time. The Lumia 928 was first spotted in the latest edition of the Vanity Fair magazine after which Nokia officially confirmed the device on its website.

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