The West African International Telecommunications & Information Technology Exhibition (WAfriTel) is coming up in Lagos from the 2nd through the 4th of June.

Members of the MobilityNigeria team will be there to pick up scoops from mobile operators, value added service providers, and developers (if any).

If we find anything really interesting, we will also have video clips for your viewing.

In the latest State of the Mobile Web report by Opera (April 2009), Nigeria continues to show impressive growth in the use of the mobile web, piping Poland to take the number 9 spot on the global top 10 list.

This is right along our projections here at MobilityNigeria. Nigeria has a population of over 140 million people, with a significant army of young people and small businesses who are discovering the benefits of internet access via their mobiles.

Recent launches of 3G data services by mobile networks have helped too. Add to this the cost of obtaining personal computers, and the mobile phone simply provides a much-needed succour to these categories of users.

The full report is available at http://www.opera.com/smw/2009/04/

Also from the report is the list of top 10 handsets used by Nigerians with Opera Mini in April 2009.

Opera Mini Top handsets for April 2009

1. Nokia N70
2. Nokia 3110c
3. Sony Ericsson K750i
4. Nokia N72
5. Nokia 3230
6. Nokia 6600
7. Nokia 6630
8. Sony Ericsson K800i
9. Nokia N73
10. Sony Ericsson W810i

Members of the MobilityNigeria team were at the Opebi base of JEJ Engineering, the country representatives for Garmap for Mobile, a navigational application with Nigeria street maps. Yomi wrote a a news item on the introduction of Garmap for Mobile in Nigeria.

One of the highlights of our visit was the demonstration of the navigation application on a Symbian-powered smartphone. Our initial impressions of the application based on the little time we spent with it are good.

First up, we noticed how simple it is to get the application up and running on the phone – a great plus for the application.

The next thing we are particularly impressed about is the user interface. The user interface, for the short time we spent with the application seemed intuitive, but we will give our final verdict on that after taking it through its paces in real life use. One thing is for sure, Garmap for Mobile got a lot of eye candy.

The application locked to our position easilly. We also tested Points Of Interests (POIs) on the application, and it delivered with no stress, identifying eateries, hotels all over the Opebi and Maryland areas.

At this point it is worth mentioning that JEJ Engineering has decided to send MobilityNigeria a complimentary copy of their streetmap application for us to review.

I must say that this gesture is commendable, and we look forward to having more mobile application developers and manufacturers borrow a leaf from JEJ Engineering/Garmap.

Our review (with pictures and videos) will be up as soon as we get the review copy promised us and put it through its paces.

Many years back, it was enough for consumers that a phone could do everything including clean the kitchen sink. But somewhere along the line, something changed.

What changed was that the consumers began to appreciate the value of a polished and user-friendly interface above raw power and features. And they’ve been voting with their money ever since.

Gone were the days when phones simply sold based on what they could do. Now, it seems the paradigm shift has occurred, and consumers are saying, “It is not so much about what the phone can do, but how enjoyable it is to use the phone”.

In case you still doubt this, the iPhone could do much less than most phones in its bracket could do. For crying out loud, it was missing several features that millions of phone users had taken for granted year in, year out. Why would anyone want to purchase such a phone?

Surprise! The iPhone has sold at an incredible rate! Why? While it lacked several standard features, the user experience on the iPhone is currently second to none, and consumers are voting – with their money.

Never mind that this “crippled” device costs twice as much as many other phones that out-gun it in terms of raw features and capabilities.

The same story is repeating itself to different degrees with Android, TouchWiz (Samsung), and TouchFLO 3D (HTC), and lately S-Class (LG) user interfaces.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a user interface and user experience revolution going on. Geeks can argue specifications from daybreak till sundown, but the mass market is clamouring for great user experiences for their money.

For some time now, I have been talking about the dated Symbian platform and of my desire to try out some of the newer mobile platforms (for example, see What Nokia Needs to Fix – Right Away!). I need not mention again that I have been “Symbian Inside” all my mobile life. Yes; I tried out my hands on WinMo and Palm once or twice, but Symbian has remained my net of safety. Plus, no-one will argue when I say that those other two platforms I had checked out do not exactly cut it as “newer”.

Anyway, I ran into an offer for a used Android-powered G1 yesterday, and decided it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. It was a low-cost offer; if I didn’t like the OS, I could chalk the expense as a minor waste.

For the sake of smartphone newbies, Android is the new mobile operating system that the guys at Google developed. And the T-mobile G1 is the very first smartphone based on that platform.

As things go, this morning, ‘Dayo and I drove down to Ibadan to pick up the T-mobile G1. It was a long day, but we are back and with an “Android” in our hands.

I will be doing a series of review articles on the G1 and the Android platform in general, so if interested, please grab our RSS feed or bookmark this site right away.

But before then, the crazy adventurous me went out of my way (with some measure of the usual risks) to make sure that this Android was brought up-to-date.

Gmail Activation

First thing, the G1 still had the email of the original user locked in. Meaning, I could not use it for my Gmail account or Google services in general. I figured that wouldn’t do. So, I did a factory reset.

That wiped out everything on the phone and returned it to a clean state. But I still had to activate it by logging in to my Gmail account (the G1 is designed not to work without an active Gmail account).

The issue was, for some reason the device simply could not login. No data indicators were showing on the screen. Anyway, after minutes of fiddling, I found the APN Settings menu (no other menu would come up besides emergency calls), and put in my network’s data settings.

Voila! In a few minutes, I had the G1 downloading my mails and running as designed. That was step one.

Firmware Update to Cupcake (version 1.5)

The G1 we picked came with firmware version 1.1. But you see, a long-awaited and certainly juicier firmware had been released of recent – version 1.5, dubbed “Cupcake”.

I downloaded the update file from Google, copied it to my microSD card on the phone, and followed the instructions. In roughly 5 minutes, I had a spanking new firmware running on the G1.

Now, I can really put it through its paces. Here are a few pictures from the update process:

‘Dayo Repents!

This introduction will not be complete if I do not mention that ‘Dayo had a brief go at the browser on the G1, and suddenly did a u-turn (or so it seemed).

You see, while I had been toying with the idea of exploring other mobile platforms, ‘Dayo had planted his feet firmly with Symbian, especially Symbian s60 5th edition. He owns a 5800 and has been nursing the ambition of getting the N97 when that is released.

But a few minutes with the G1 user interface and web browser did what I had been unable to do. ‘Dayo simply used certain adjectives to describe the user interfaces and browsers on Nokia (and Symbian) devices. Adjectives like: “rubbish“, and “nonsense“. And remarks like, “Why is Nokia doing us this way?” etc, etc. I’m sure that you get the picture by now.

If this first child of Android could make ‘Dayo have a re-think about S60 5th edition (a much older and mature platform), there must be something to this new kid on the block then.

Hang around!

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Garmin’s Garmap for Mobile is now available with streetmaps of major cities in Nigeria, including: Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, Otta, among others.

Here are more features:

• 9,800km of routable map data
• Over 8,800 points of interest (POIs)
• Street maps for Lagos, FCT Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, and Ota amongst others
• Turn-by-turn voice prompts
• Route simulation: Ability to simulate route and view destination on map before embarking on the journey
• Weather forecast: Ability to check five day weather forecasts destinations and over 5000 cities worldwide
• Flight schedule and status: Access flight details for many major airlines
• Points of Interest dialing: Choose from over 8800 Points of Interest and call a point of interest (such as a restaurant or coffee shop) using the phone feature.
• Location messaging: Send a location message to another Nigerian mobile phone, detailing their exact location in GPS coordinates. If the receiving mobile phone also has Garmap For Mobile installed the message translates into a destination point and allows the receiver to navigate easily and quickly to that point.
• Panic button: Automatically fires off an urgent location message to up to three emergency contacts whenever the ‘#’ key is depressed for more than 3 seconds on certain Nokia and Samsung phones.
• “Panoramio”, a tool that allows consumers to access user-generated content that has been uploaded to the Web.
• On board user’s manual and troubleshooting information: The user’s manual and troubleshooting information sits on the application on your phone, so help is wherever you are.
• SD card and Installation disk: The application comes on a 2gig SD card and an installation / recovery disk
• 1.8 gig memory space: The application comes with 1.8gig free memory space on the SD card

The official distributor for Garmin in Nigeria, JEJ Engineering, says that the application is compatible with Windows Mobile (Pocket PC and Smart phone) and Symbian S60 devices with built-in GPS.

This really is interesting and good news. I’m looking forward to giving the application a spin and presenting a detailed review here. Watch this space.

There has been some measure of controversy surrounding the definition of a smartphone, especially since the arrival of the iPhone. In an AAS article about how the Nokia 5800 won a contest as “Best multimedia smartphone”, the question of whether or not the iPhone is a smartphone came up again.

The organisers of the contest left out the iPhone, among others, from the list of contenders, and I honestly am of the opinion that the contest was biased. It looks like those behind it wanted the 5800 to win. But then that is my opinion.

A couple of commenters there have laid the matter to rest, but to help readers of MobiNaija put this controversy to rest, here again is the definition of a smartphone:

“A smartphone is any phone that allows 3rd party applications to be written for, installed and run on its native OS (operating system)”

Nothing else matters. Following this definition, the iPhone qualifies as a smartphone. Some argue that the iPhone lacks true multi-tasking, but so did the various Palm OS versions in use over the years (to a different degree), but Palm devices were (and are) still accorded smartphone status.

Hopefully, it is settled. The iPhone has a native OS for which 3rd party applications are designed, and on which they are installed and run. The iPhone is a smartphone. Stop beefing

WinMo smartphone users can now synchronise their phone contacts and back them up to the web via Microsoft’s My Phone service.

• Back up and restore your phone’s information to a password-protected web site
• Access and update your contacts and appointments through your web account
• Share photos on your phone with family and friends

Signing up for your Microsoft My Phone account gives you access to 200 MB of free storage on the Microsoft My Phone web site. Not bad.

Head over to the My Phone website for more information about the service.

Pioneer CDMA operator, Intercellular, has not been visible lately. Having fallen on hard times, the operator currently has about 50, 000 active subscribers running on an outdated network.

But its new majority shareholder, Sudatel, has plans to inject $500 million into the company, re-build the network from scratch, and re-launch by 4th quarter of this year.

Source: Sudatel-owned Intercellular returns to Nigerian telecoms market (Technology Times)

I am a geek. I love super gadgets, especially internet-connected super gadgets. In plain English, that means smartphones. Having used fourty different mobile phones in about seven years, almost all my primary devices at any point in time have been smartphones, and we are talking about the cream of the crop: The Ericsson R380s, Motorola A008, Nokia 9210, Sony Ericsson P800, Nokia 9500, and Nokia E90, among others.

And these super gadgets have more than proven themselves capable as laptop replacements where necesarry. With their powerful processors and advanced browsers, I have been able to consistently get 60% to 80% of my web tasks done on my smartphones.

Those tasks include:

- administering reseller hosting accounts via WHM and RC
- administering hosting accounts via Cpanel
- administering WordPress accounts, and
- online banking on various platforms
- watch movies and video podcasts

For years, I lived in the world of mobile bliss – the very cutting edge.

But something happened recently to stop me dead in my tracks. I purchased a lower mid-range QWERTY phone – the LG KS360. I wanted to see how well it could replace my E90, for example.

As I used this device from day to day, gradually has it dawned on me that totting smartphones around meant I was living in a world that is not the reality for the majority of mobile phone users.

The KS360 could not play certain video resolutions that I had taken for granted on devices like the E90 and the 5800. Its more basic browser could not handle the huge and complex Ajax-ridden pages that WordPress runs on. And as for WebHostManager and Cpanel… don’t even go there.

So, Dayo and I tried out some of these tasks on a few other basic phones to be sure. For example, the first two editions of my Venture Show video podcast were beyond the capabilities of devices like the KS360, Sony Ericsson T650i, and the Nokia 3600 – all phones that are likely to be found in the possession of the average Joe.

Reality check: the majority of mobile internet users, who fall within the bracket of low to mid-range phone users, would never be able to identify with my claims of being able to run my entire work schedule from the screen of a phone. Their phones simply do not possess the same capabilities as the phones that we geeks carry around.

We had been producing video and web content for smartphones. And we had ignored the majority of phone users.

It is my opinion that until mobile web designers and developers target the more basic phones, such that the majority of phone users can use their basic phones to access vital web services, the mobile web won’t really succeed in mainstream society.

Opera Mini is the success that it is because it afforded the guy with an average phone to access certain websites that he would otherwise not have been able to access on his mobile. Opera Mini put the mobile web in the hands of the masses.

Do we then leave it to mobile browser developers alone to address site accessibility? That sounds like a bad idea. A better approach would be for mobile website designers to take the more basic mobile browsers into consideration in the design process, such that regardless of the capability of the browser being used, there is a guarantee that a site would work well on that browser.

Being a geek can be an illusion. Because we enjoy playing with advanced toys, we often forget that the world is more acquainted with more basic toys, and that it is such lower-end toys we should target and test on.

No; I am not throwing away my smartphone. And I am not advocating against smartphones and high-end, high-capacity mobiles.

I must admit that coming from a background like mine, using a mid-range non-smartphone like the KS360 as my primary device is terribly a little painful. But it is a move that is helping me face and identify the real problems that those I am designing for face when accessing the web on their mobile phones. Perhaps then, this new pain, albeit temporary, is one that is worth it.

The dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit from dotMobi to help mobilize your WordPress site and blog.

It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the site, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit the site or write new posts when out and about.

The plugin gives tremendous customisation options. This plugin is what powers the mobile version of this site now. Below are images of the plugin at work on the built-in browser of the LG KS360:

The mobile admin interface is basic, but in my own opinion, that is exactly what is needed for it to be usable on the majority of mobile browsers in the market today.

You can download the dotMobi WordPress Mobile Pack.

MobilityNigeria is powered by WordPress. As such, the site uses the WordPress Mobile Edition (WME) plugin by Alex King to cater for mobile users. WordPress Mobile Edition presents a mobile-friendly version of WordPress sites to mobile versions. It is a great piece of work.

Up until a week or two ago, MobilityNigeria utilized WME version 2.1a, and it worked flawlessly. Then we upgraded to the sleek, new version 3.03 (3.04, the latest version, kept returning an activation error).

Yesterday night, I did some browsing on a more basic phone than the super-smartphones I normally use. Visiting MobilityNigeria on the phone’s browser returned an error to the effect that the page was “too large” to be downloaded. I repeatedly tried to access the site but got similar results.

Finally, I thought of checking another WordPress site that uses WME 3.03, www.davidajao.com/blog. Surprise, surprise – same result!

Note that MobilityNigeria never had this problem with even the most basic of mobile browsers when it was running WME 2.1a. I reverted to WME 2.1a this morning, and MobilityNigeria now loads fine on that same phone.

Clearly, WME 3.03 was doing something wrong. I see two options:

1. WME 3.03 is not redirecting the browser in question to the mobile version, and so the browser is attempting to load the web interface and finding it too large, or
2. The default WME 3.03 theme (Carrington Mobile), which we used, is bloated, and the mobile browser in question finds it too large

I went through the mobile browser’s User Agent list for both WME 2.1a and WME 3.03, and besides the touch browsers, YahooCrawler, and Samsung Omnia agents added to 3.03, the list is the same.

From here, it looks like the problem is that of bloatware – the Carrignton Mobile theme just being too large for some mobile browsers to handle. But then, I may have missed something along the way.

Anyone facing these issues? Any ideas? I’ll also send a feedback to the developer, so we can see if anything can be worked out.

In the meantime, MobilityNigeria stays with WME 2.1a.