Competition is a wonderful thing. Just last week I commented on the lack of competition in the market since 8ta announced their new call and data rates, and finally Vodacom has come out with their guns blazing. But their latest broadband “starter pack” is perhaps rather aimed at Cell C’s offering of either 2GB per 12 months for R1499 once off or the 5GB per 12 month for R2999 (which also gets a faster connection). Both of these include the modems needed.

Vodacom is aiming at the lower end of the market – users will pay only R400 once off, which includes a 3G modem and 100 meg per month for 12 months. While 100 meg might sound like much, this is ideal for very light users of the internet. Users can of course add bundles if the 100 meg runs out. This aimed at either people for whom computing is not a major concern, or people who already have wifi access at home and work, and need something for those times when you are on the road. What I am wondering about as well – does the 100MB included carry over if not used?

What puzzles me as well is that Vodacom can offer this great pricing, yet still asks R88 for 110 MB data bundles? Also – how about more options? 100MB is a bit light in my opinion, and I want to see how Vodacom can compete with Cell C, which is still the best offering for users who want to actually use their computers a bit more on the road.

Source: Mybroadband

Despite 8ta‘s low call costs and reasonable data rates, the thing most people seem to most impressed by is the innovative free call and sms deals. These include:

Well it turns out the first one million customers on 8ta will be getting this for life. How cool is that?

I have already got an 8ta SIM card, and I havent been particularly impressed by how long 8ta has taken to activate the SIM card. I bought it on Monday at 16:00, RICA’d it as well. It was only fully activated on Wednesday at 3PM. They apparently had a backlog of activations.

I am trying it out on a Nokia N8, and so far the signal and data connection speed is very brisk. It locks on mostly to MTN’s network. I will be posting my impressions with 8ta in future as well. Call quality seems fine, but I havent really moved around yet.

The thing that pulled me towards 8ta was the landline calling rates – at 65c per minute all day it is the ideal solution if you do not want to pay for a landline just to make the occasional phone call.

I am however very disappointed that other network operators havent stepped up to the plate. Vodacom dropped their allday calling rate to R1.40 for prepaid, but nothing else really. Maybe they will improve their rates once 8ta announces their contract pricing?

Will keep you posted.

Finally! After being released on iPad a few weeks back, VLC is now available on iPhone as well, using a universal app. For those who do not know – VLC player is the “it can play any video format” open source player that is available on a variety of platforms. Doesnt matter what the video file format is, VLC somehow finds a way to play it…

VLC player for iPhone does require a bit of horsepower, because it bypasses the dedicated video decoding hardware on the device. So you will need at least a iPhone 3GS or later, and you can expect the battery not to last as long when you are playing files through the dedicated iPod app.

VLC uses the iTunes file transfer method – you simply connect your iOS device, go to the device in iTunes, select apps, scroll down to “File Sharing” and select the VLC player app on the left. Click on the “Add” button and then select the files you want to throw onto your iPhone or iPad. No need to transcode / convert files for use in iTunes. Most of the files I tested it with played without issue. After you are done watching files, you can simply delete them right on the device.

Go get it here.

Here at Bandwidth Blog we do love our Apple products, especially our iPhones and iPads. So this week I decided to ask someone not so infatuated with Apple to review the iPad. Albert from ZADroid is not an Apple fanboy, his allegiance lies with Android. I will be honest – I am not a pro on Android. I have used them, and like them a lot. But if you want in-depth knowledge regarding specific Android devices or the platform in general, you have to go look at ZADroid. These guys know what they talk about – and they are fanatic about Android. So if you are sick of fanboys reviewing Apple products – who better to evaluate a popular device like the iPad?

Albert is a developer, gadget geek, and all-round nice guy. He’s passionate about Android, and writes for ZADroid, a new blog that covers Android in South Africa. However, anything shiny and sufficiently technologically advanced puts a smile on his face. Above and beyond that, Albert loves the web and the technologies that drive it, good design, and original ideas.

So, thanks to a combination of pure blind luck and a massive helping of generosity, I am now an iPad user.

Now, I’m an Android fanboy (I run and write for ZADroid), so the reality distortion field that makes your average Apple consumer tear up at the sight of anything with a half-eaten fruit on it doesn’t really apply to me.

Will I be able to give you an objective opinion on the iPad? Probably not, but it may be more objective than what someone with a cupboard full of empty boxes from Apple can give you.  (ed: are you talking about me?!) 

“What about the Galaxy Tab?!” I hear you scream? Well, it’s way too expensive, and in my opinion, Android isn’t quite ready yet to power a tablet. We’ll see once I get to review one. For now, though, I have an iPad, so I may just as well use it.

I’ve been using the iPad for about a week now, and I must admit, it’s quite handy. Apple’s hardware has always been a notch up from anything else on the market, and the iPad is pretty solid, and pretty nice to look at. I don’t like the shiny glass screen and the fact that it is one of the worst fingerprint magnets I’ve ever seen. I think that it’s too heavy. However, the screen is gorgeous, bright and vivid, and very responsive. This is perfect for consuming things with bright colours, like movies and photos, but I find that trying to read a novel tires my eyes faster than I expected. So, I’ll probably acquire a Kindle soon for that purpose. I also think that a front-facing camera couldn’t hurt, but hey, that’s planned obsolescence for you. Oh, and the battery life is astonishing.

Software-wise, I’m at both ends of the spectrum. I’ve always appreciated the (mostly) consistent nature of iOS. It’s also the first platform where you’ll see new, sometimes brave, but intuitive, user interaction design. The keyboard is much better  than I expected it to be, too. So, there’s that side of the coin.  On the other side, I find iOS clunky to use. Way too many taps to get somewhere simple in a lot of cases, and no hard back button, makes for a frustrating experience. Example? The arse-backwards way of attaching photos to an email.

The notification  system sucks. It has been said before, but needs repeating, because it sucks so hard.

No multitasking. Not much more I can say about that. Sure, the update in November will add multitasking to the table, but it isn’t multitasking as we know it from desktop computing (although I understand and appreciate the technical reasons for this). We’ll see.

iTunes for SA. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like jumping through all those hoops that’ll get me a (T&C violating) US account. So, yes, I’m satisfied with the content South Africans can access. No games, movies or music, but I’m not much of a gamer, and there are ways around the other issue.

So, all in all? I like it. It has its shortcomings, but show me a modern piece of technology that doesn’t. I don’t see it as essential, and I wouldn’t spend my own money on it (maybe when the third generation arrives I may feel differently about that). That being said, I have found a place for it. I do find myself using the iPad instead of my netbook for quite a few things. To me, it’s all about consumption, which is something the iPad caters for exceptionally well. When I need to do something that requires a bit more complexity than the iPad can handle, I pick up my Android phone, or head on over to my desktop.

Does the iPad replace an existing piece of technology? No, but it does seem to fill a niche I didn’t realize existed: instant gratification via ease of consumption in a world of information overload.

Last night Telkom released the initial pricing for their 8ta mobile network, and boy does it look good. 8ta has a number of small incentives in their prepaid package which immediately makes them the cheapest mobile network in SA.

But first off pricing:

Calls to landlines (this includes Telkom and Neotel) will be 65c per minute, at all times during the day. Calls to another cellphone is R1.50 per minute (this can be to Vodacom, MTN, Cell C or 8ta), again at a flat rate all day. International rate – 8ta will charge R2.50 per minute to more than a 100 countries (isnt that much less than Telkom’s fixed line rates?). What is perhaps more significant is the call incentive that 8ta uses – for every 3 seconds of incoming calls, you get 1 sec to phone out. FINALLY – a reason to keep that telemarketer on the line!

SMSs and MMSs will both be charged at 50c each – but if a customer sends 5 sms’s in a day, they will get 50 free sms’s in a day. Wonder if a person even needs a prepaid SMS bundle with something like that?

Data costs going to be R1 per meg if a user does not use a bundle, which is already half of what Vodacom charges, but their data bundle pricing also seems to improve on existing offerings:

1GB for R250, 500MB for R150, 250MB for R100, 100MB for R50. Great. These can be accessed at 7.2 HSPA, but 8ta might also upgrade to LTE in future.

All these pricing details are just for the prepaid users, so we will have to see how their contract pricing will improve on these even further. (Update: 8ta has now announced their contract pricing) Initially 8ta will use their own network as well as use a roaming agreement using MTN basestations, so clearly the Vodacom Telkom breakup was nasty. So reception should not be a problem.

So only time will tell how Vodacom and MTN will compete with this pricing – if the recent iPhone launch is anything to go by, Vodacom and MTN clearly have some flexibility in their prices. When MTN announced their lower end deal on the iPhone 4, Vodacom had to go and lower their initial iPhone 4 pricing as well 2 days later. Competition is a great thing.

Also, how will 8ta compete with Cell C’s latest mobile broadband offerings? We tested it, and it pretty much blows away the competition in SA.

But I am sure most people are still wondering how on earth Telkom can offer these good deals for mobile, yet their fixed line service pricing has remained overpriced and stagnant. We can only hope that they approach their fixed line business with the same new found vigour…

Nielsen recently unveiled their latest smartphone statistics based on sales data of the past 6 months. What’s also significant about this data is that it includes the first month of iPhone 4 availability. Now if you take the phenomonal sales figures of the iPhone 4 (1.7 million iPhone 4s were sold in its first three days of availability), it should tell you something about how well Android as a whole is doing. There is a definate upwards trend in the uptake of Google‘s mobile operating system, and it has finally surpassed both iPhone and Blackberry in recent sales figures.

What should be taken into account however, is that Android is used by a variety of manufacturers spread over many different models. “iPhone” consists of iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. Among overall market share it is still Blackberry who is king, but it remains to be seen if they can hold on to that title.

These days the Appstore on iPhone has become so massive that its pretty tough to find the best apps for a certain task. Whether its productivity, games or entertainment, you cannot simply go and download the most popular app of the week. While the popularity of an app might be indicative of how good it is, in many cases the top selling app in a week might be merely doing so well because it is on sale, or its just a “fad”.

Luckily there is now a source to quickly find the very best apps out there. No searching through Top 25 lists, just the very best.

Here is how it works:

Applications are nominated throughout each month by our knowledgeable (and good-looking!) committee members. Once each month, our committee will then vote on the nominated applications and induct, at most, 12 applications into the App Hall of Fame. Those inducted applications will be displayed on the site for all time as a reference to app lovers new and old.

Their first twelve apps have just been announced:

I have to agree with their choice for the first month, these are all great apps – I personally use Evernote, Twitter and Shazam. But I dont care about the games. While I do play Angry Birds and Flight Control, games typically fall in the “flavour of the week” category for me. Here is hoping they focus a bit more on actual useful apps as well.

While I am on about this – here is my own personal App Hall of Fame (excluding the ones mentioned already):

• Facebook (has been neglected recently, but still a great app, in fact I never use the Facebook website)
• News24 (I know, I know, but this is the best SA based news source on the iPhone)
• CNN (Interface works well, and video clips are a bonus. You need a decent Wifi conenction though)
• Beejive (The best IM client on the iPhone. Little pricey though)

At first App Hall of Fame will only focus on iPhone and iPod Touch apps, but they will approach iPad and Android apps in the future as well.

Pretty interesting observation made by Brett Jordan here. This takes into account the Apple’s most popular product 10 years ago vs now: