Since the emergence of 3G or third generation networks  (over a decade ago), mobile handsets have gradually evolved into more than just useful tools developed to make voice calls on the move.

Nowadays, the majority of mobile devices on the market are designed to connect us with the world via a mobile internet connection.  This has given rise to an exciting new market of applications and services aimed at making our lives easier, more productive and more entertaining – whether it’s Angry Birds or your favourite news app, each one requires and relates to the mobile web in a unique way.

This kind of transformation has hastened a change in the average mobile user’s daily habits.

Today, we are consuming more data than ever before. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016, South African mobile traffic is expected to grow by 49% over the next five years.

Shockingly, the study also predicts that South African mobile data traffic will expand by 102 565 Terabytes per month by 2016. That’s the equivalent of 26 million DVDs monthly or 283 million text messages every second. This anticipated surge is due to a forecasted continued growth in connected devices in the coming years.

What is less certain is how our tendency to use more data is affecting our pockets. Mobile data is often considerably more costly than its fixed line and fibre cousins due to the initial investment and on-going operational capital required to deliver it on a wide scale.

Fortunately, South African operators are bucking the trend by introducing data plans which make it more cost effective for the average subscriber to truly make use of today’s modern, connected handsets.

Nashua Mobile recently partnered with Nokia to offer Nokia X2-01, Nokia C3, Nokia N8, Nokia E5 and Nokia E7owners access to unlimited data services at a monthly cost of R59.00. As one of the only currently available packages of its kind, Nashua Mobile’s Xtreme Data offering is breaking new ground for local mobile users and the plan is to continue to expand the range of handsets that can benefit from this offer

In a similar fashion, other networks such as MTN (75MB add on data plan for R49 monthly), Vodacom (100MB for R49 monthly on a MyMeg100 package), Cell C (50MBfor R50 monthly on a Smartdata bundle) and 8ta (100MB bundle for R40) are aggressively trying to make mobile data access increasingly more affordable.

In doing so, local networks are facilitating a change in the way South Africans relate to the outside world. By lowering data costs, they are offering a greater number of subscriber’s access to basic online amenities such as email, video and search.

To view a comprehensive list of South African data bundles and pricing terms click here.

Nokia and Microsoft hosted the first of four Lumia Hackathons (#lumiahack) in Port Elizabeth (PE) this past weekend, and what a weekend it was. The event brought together self proclaimed tech geeks for 48 hours to build applications for Windows Phone, the rapidly growing platform that powers the Nokia Lumia range. Nokia and Microsoft are inviting students from nine campuses: UCT, Stellenbosch, UKZN, NMMU, DUT Steve Biko, Wits, University of Johannesburg, University of Pretoria and TUT to build innovative apps. Twitter was buzzing with competitors and on lookers describing the event, with the copious amounts of caffeine, minimal sleep, growing excitement and extreme coding and hacking being the topics of choice.

Forty students registered and participated in the PE event at St Georges Park which boasted a Developer Zone, Chill Out Space and Snoozzze Zone. Snacks and meals were served throughout the day and participants received an address and welcome from Dave Russell, developer evangelist for Microsoft, Nyaladzi Mpofu, academic advisor for Microsoft and Derrick Kotze, Nokia’s developer outreach manager.

Kotze says: “The app ideas started rolling the minute developers entered their new ‘home’ for the next 48 hours and by early Saturday morning many developers were still happily coding away at their apps and games. They generally slept in shifts of three or four hours before jumping back in and coding.”

These new apps are hopefully going to be added to Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace, which currently boasts over 65 000 apps for people to download and experience. The smartphone era has inspired countless possibilities for people looking to build apps, with many overnight successes coming in areas like shopping, music, photo sharing and games to name a few. Kotze continues, “What we aim to do with the LumiaHack is to create a fun and supportive environment where developers can take their app from concept to Marketplace in just 48 hours. It builds their confidence by proving that they have the talent and skill necessary to compete with the best in the world and hopefully inspires them to build more mobile apps and games that could very possibly become the next top app”.

Kotze adds that the ideas don’t always have to be big and complicated, and advises developers to build something they need or enjoy doing. In addition, design is starting to become a major differentiator for successful apps. They should not just work but also look the part.

Having looked at the idea, execution and design of the apps, Kotze said two things hit home. “We have an incredible amount of talent in this country and it sometimes takes just a little spark to set big dreams in motion. The development platform was completely new to many of the students and they took to it naturally.”

If you would like to apply SMS “HACK” to 41611 and join South Africa’s developer elite. There is limited space, and successful applicants will be notified. Bring your laptops (if you don’t have one, special arrangements will me made), a valid student card, sleeping bag and lots of energy and creativity.

Dates:

Cape Town 23- 25 March 2012

Durban 30 March- 1 April

Johannesburg 20-22 April

Non- student developers should also look forward to a Public #LumiaHack. Nokia will be announcing an event very soon.

Curiously, the mobile phone has been a critical factor in almost every major communication breakthrough in the last thirty years. It has played host to mobile voice calls, acted as the platform for Short Message Service (SMS) and laid a foundation for the growth of data based tools such as Mxit or WhatsApp.

Today, smartphones and social media are beginning to converge, delivering integrated services which interact with each other in a much deeper way than ever before.

Naturally, our increasingly dependent and intimate relationship with social media and instant messaging is beginning to alter the way in which we relate to each other and connect on an emotional level.

The immediacy and depth of modern communication is making it much easier to reach out to new people. An ever growing number of youths and young adults are beginning to use these channels to establish romantic relationships, sharing intimate details with contacts before meeting them in person.

South African based mobile network Mxit is a hotbed for this kind of interaction. Roughly 45% of the data based messaging tool’s subscribers are under the age of 25. Many of these users are sparking new romances over this platform, getting to know their love interest a little better before taking the leap towards a face to face meeting.

Twitter has also proven a worthwhile tool to find love online, albeit at a later age. According to a 2011 study, 57% of Twitter’s subscribers are aged 26 to 44 – making way for more youthful romantic pursuits on Mxit or WhatsApp.

Mike Sharman, first made contact with 5fm’s Kim Schulze over Twitter. Today, the couple are engaged and are particularly well known on the social network for their antics.

“I first made contact with Kim over Twitter after I heard her on radio talking about how she had adapted a Britney Spears song for herself. I let her know that I’d done the same with a Bob Marley song and it went from there. We had a few mutual friends and I met her at a braai a few weeks later.”

“Although social media initiated the conversation between us, it was our face to face interaction that really sealed the deal. It’s important not to get caught up in someone’s online persona – they may be very different in reality” he adds.

Put simply, mobile handsets have changed the dating game. By supporting instant messaging and social media, smartphones have facilitated instant communication between friends and potential lovers.

To find out how to download WhatsApp for your Nokia, click here.

If you want to keep abreast of the latest news, sport and lifestyle information from South Africa and abroad, then the News24 app has to feature high on your apps-to-get list. Besides enabling you to read all the latest articles, you’ll also be able to check out a 7 day weather forecast for your area and those big on photos can peruse the latest news in pictures.

Frequent and first-time travellers on the Gautrain will appreciate the useful info coming their way via the free Gautrain app. It will deliver all the information needed to plan your journey including fares, time tables as well as station information.

Music aficionados wishing to share some of the most amazing new songs or artists they have discovered will love the Tweet This Song! app. Like its name suggests, it will allow users to quickly post a song to Twitter along with a link to the song.
Mobile entertainment seekers can check out the free ZenAquaLunar game and free Tsotsi game. The latter might not have been inspired by the Oscar-winning movie, but just like the movie this addictive game will have you rooting for the guy from the wrong side of the tracks as you evade the authorities.

If you fear that your personality might have been darkened after assuming the role of the dodgy character in Tsotsi, then you can put this belief to the test via the Personality At Work app. This app is based upon personality tests used by business professionals, who are working in the life coaching and mentoring fields. It might have been simplified, but this app will still provide you with handy insights into your character.

The more technically inclined Window Phone OS users can take a look at the free Tone Generator app, which is a simple application used to generate sine waves with a required frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 kHz.

Controlling the cost of data, however, has been a barrier for many local consumers. Until recently, affordable mobile packages were few and far between – leaving users who truly wanted to embrace the concept of mobile broadband in a difficult and often costly position.

Fortunately, things are starting to change.

Today, Nashua Mobile launched a data package aimed at mobile users who prefer not to worry about how much they’re spending on email, browsing and social media.

Nashua Mobile Xtreme Data will be available for R59 monthly over and above standard contract charges and will work by routing data from the handset to Nashua Mobile’s shared GSM data access point names (APNs) from Vodacom and MTN.

In more simple terms, Nokia X2-01, Nokia C3, Nokia N8, Nokia E5 and Nokia E7 will have unlimited access to the mobile services they really want at a fixed monthly cost.

Nashua Mobile MD, Chris Radley is particularly enthusiastic about this new offering and believes it will usher in a new era for South African mobile users.

“The cost of data usage has been one of the most significant barriers to wider use of smartphones for Web access and other online applications. With our new offering, we hope to make the mobile Web accessible and affordable to a wider range of smartphone users.”

Colin Baumbart, General Manager for South Africa, believes that Xtreme Data is a logical progression for a market hungry for true mobile competition.

“Fixed cost is a clear consumer trend in South Africa, and to be able to work with operators and service provider’s to provide true competition in the market is something Nokia has been working hard on for some time now”

According to a Tech Central interview conducted with Nokia Vice President of South and East Africa, Gerard Brandjes, Nokia has been in discussions with local operators over a fixed cost browsing bundle for some time now.

“Fixed-cost models are very relevant for consumers at the moment. There’s effectively only one device offering that model in the market, and it’s in our interest to investigate and deliver an opposing offer” he said in August 2011

Together, Nokia and Nashua Mobile have achieved what many thought impossible. Here’s to mobile data freedom!

Links

https://www.facebook.com/NashuaMobile

http://www.techcentral.co.za

http://www.techcentral.co.za/nokia-sa-lobbies-for-fixed-cost-data-plans/25067/

Mix Radio is a service enabling users to stream a vast library (currently more than 15 million tracks) of music free of charge, by employing a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. Users will be able to enjoy this service right away without having to worry about having to subscribe to it or having to log-in first. Simply select your favourite artist or music genre and Mix Radio will do the rest.

For a more personal experience, you are also able to create your own mixes as well as personalised playlists based on the kind of music that you already have stored on your Lumia smartphone. Moreover, these playlists can be pinned to your smartphone’s home-screen and even downloaded to allow you to listen to them whilst you are offline.

The latter is particularly useful if you want to listen to music to help pass the time during a long domestic flight, as the SAA are now allowing in-flight mode for smartphones and other supported mobile devices. This will enable you to cache your favourite radio stream before boarding your plane and then listen to it during the flight. And if you happen to come across individual tracks or even entire albums by your favourite band that you now wish to purchase and download to your smartphone, you can buy these via the Nokia music store.

Just keep in mind that although you’ll be able to enjoy add-free music for mahala by way of this service, it is still a very data intensive app, so we recommend that you use it while connected to a Wi-Fi network to avoid nasty data bill surprises or shocks come month’s end.

As updates always come in stages, it may take a few days for you to be prompted to download the update. Please not that you can only get the update via Nokia PC Suite, and you need to get the latest version (3.3.8) from http://nokia.com/nokiasuite.

What is new with Nokia Belle?

Nokia Belle provides Symbian users with more display real estate to place apps on, as the number of home-screens that users have access to increases from three to six. Besides being able to place apps on these added home-screens, you can also add free-form, resizable live widgets. These (as well as apps) can now be placed freely, anywhere on the home-screens, with the widgets providing users with more information at a glance than a simple app shortcut is able to.

Also new is a pull-down status bar, providing you with quick and easier access to all notifications such as missed calls or emails received from a central location. Right on top of this notification bar it shows the connectivity status of the various wireless connectivity options including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, enabling you to activate/ deactivate these faster.

It’s not only this new status bar that enhances the way that you view and access notification, as Nokia Belle also brings with it an informative lock-screen, which indicates notification the likes of received SMSs at a glance.

People with a Nokia C7 will also have access to richer near field communication (NFC) technology, allowing them to do things like share a photo with a tap with other NFC enabled devices.

With the Xbox Companion App, you can search through the content on your Xbox 360 and in the Live Marketplace. Games, movies and music are all available at your fingertips. In other words, your Xbox 360 and your Nokia Lumia 800 are the gateway to all the entertainment you’ll ever need. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, you can use your new Lumia 800 to control your Xbox. Fast forward, rewind, pause and play. The action is right in your hands.

On the move? Not a problem. With games like Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles, Fruit Ninja and Monopoly you can take your Xbox Experience with you on the road. The best part of the Windows Marketplace is that you can try games for free before you buy them.

More importantly, you’re probably wondering, does it have Angry Birds? The answer: of course it does. The worldwide phenomenon that has been downloaded more than 500 million times is available on the Lumia 800 and looks incredible on the 3.7” ClearBlack AMOLED display. It’s like the game was designed for the Lumia, with its 1.4GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM graphics are as smooth as silk.

But if you are an Xbox 360 owner then there is no need to leave your Xbox at home. With your Nokia Lumia 800, you can sign into your Xbox LIVE account and earn achievements and Gamerscore while playing mobile games. You can challenge your friends and play online with them through the amazing Xbox LIVE service which has over 20 million active members worldwide.

The new Nokia Lumia 800 combines the best hardware with the best mobile gaming experience available through the Xbox LIVE service.

This is where Nokia Link comes in, as this software enables you to easily move all your music, photos, as well as your videos from or to your smartphone and a Windows PC (powered by Windows 7 32-bit & 64-bit editions) or Mac computer (operating on OS X Snow Leopard & OS X Lion).

Using this lightweight computer app you will be able to perform crucial security functions including creating data backups and restoring your data and also be allowed to copy mobile content to your favourite computer applications the like of Windows Media Player, iPhoto and Apple’s iTunes.

How do I get it?

You can either download (around 10 MB for Windows & approx. 25 MB for Mac) Nokia Link from the web by going to www.nokia.com/nokialink. Alternatively, you can use a compatible USB data cable to connect your Nokia N9 to your computer, select Sync and connect as the USB connection mode and then follow the on-screen instructions to get the application.

Since connectivity is just so essential in today’s day and age, topping our quick ‘cool’ list is Joiku Spot. Download this little app and your phone immediately becomes a mobile hotspot through which any other devices can connect to the internet. It’s clever too – you can see how much connectivity each device and user is consuming. If you’re feeling generous, you can get all your buddies hooked up to the internet using just your Nokia and its 3G connection. Or if you’re stingy like me, you’ll just use it to connect your notebook and tablet through your phone.

Remember when you were a kid and having a walkie-talkie was quite possibly the pinnacle of cool? Relive those days with WalkieTooth. You guessed it, this app turns your phone into a walkie talkie using its Bluetooth wireless network. While it immediately reminded us of how much fun a walkie talkie was ‘back in the day’, it may have other useful applications beyond having fun – Bluetooth range is quite surprisingly long, so see what you can think of. Best of all is that not only does this app enable free walkie talkie chatting, it also doesn’t cost anything at all.

Gamer? If you are, you’ll understand and appreciate the value of a screenshot taken at just the right moment. Now you can do just the same with Screensnap. Screen grabs of your Nokia are useful for more than just sharing the moment with gaming mates – it can be handy to help others, for example, or to send useful information such as a map, to someone who needs it. It’s also a free app, so no need to reach for the credit card for this one.

Isn’t it cool to have your friends’ picture appear on screen when they dial your mobile? But setting all of that up is a bit of a hassle to say the least, so for the great majority of them, nothing much happens when they contact you. All that can change with the Contact Photo Sync app. It syncs your phonebook with everyone’s favourite social networking site Facebook with just a few clicks. Ah, automation, we do love you.

Spend a bit of time browsing the Nokia Store for more awesome apps. There are more there than you could possibly use and in all likelihood a whole lot that will blow you away. Tell us what you’ve found and why you like it!