Notice from Etisalat:

Dear Customer, buy a handset and SIM card with N1, 000 free airtime for as low as N3, 700 at any Etisalat outlet. Offer valid while stock lasts.

At this time, we do not have details of the handset make and model. But if you need a new line and handset and are low on funds, or just need a basic handset for backup purposes, this could be what you are looking for.

Be warned, though, that the handset is likely to be locked to the Etiosalat network, meaning you are not likely to be able to use a SIM from another network with it.

Looking through all the news of new devices being made available on various networks across the world at subsidised prices, I had to ask myself, “When exactly will our networks begin offering subsidised phones with their services?”

Come to think of it, purchasing a phone through a network here in Nigeria often means that you are paying more for it than if you purchased the device on the open market. Yes; just try getting a Blackberry from MTN, Glo or Zain!

For example, a strategy that a late-comer like Etisalat could use to generate new subscriptions is to offer subsidised phones (and lower tariffs) on a contract. Have they considered it?

Perhaps I am merely dreaming. But, back to my question… “When?” Does anyone know?

Nokia is letting you try one week of free worldwide navigation on Maps. If you have a GPS-enabled Nokia device, here’s your opportunity to try Nokia Maps 3.0 for free.

Head over to the Nokia Maps Free Navigation Licence page.

This is not news to those of us who objectively assess phones. The iPhone is revolutionary in many ways, but if you need a phone you can actually work on, stay away!!

Engadget Editor, Joshua Topolsky, was recently away from the office and tried to get some work done on his iPhone 3GS, but ended up with a very frustrating experience.

His complaints include:

1. lack of multi-tasking
2. unreliability of on-screen keyboard for chatting
3. intrusive notification system for SMS, calendar events, and push IM messages

Joshua says:

Basic functionality, like calling people, email, and certainly document editing still feel inelegant and clunky due to the onscreen keyboard, and the lack of multitasking makes moving around through those typically important tasks difficult to say the least. The experience on an Android device, S60, the Pre, a BlackBerry, or even Windows Mobile just makes more sense. Let me say that again: those experiences make more sense. Now I’m not saying the execution of those experiences is better across platforms, but the philosophy of letting users multitask is more natural to us. The iPhone doesn’t even have a method for switching between recently used or favorite applications.

We don’t work like this on our computers — why does Apple think we want to work like this on our phones?

These issues are not just being discovered. They are established deal-breakers for people who work on the go (on their mobiles). They are the reasons an iPhone is a No-no for me. The iPhone is a sleek, friendly device if you are into media and do not necesarrilly need to work on your phone. The user interface is lovely. But try to work, and…

I know that ‘Dayo has been talking of buying an iPhone recently. Unless Apple delivers a multi-tasking, QWERTY keyboard version of the iPhone, something tells me that he is more likely to regret going that route. I know his work schedule! But then, I believe in miracles.

Read Joshua’s full account: Taking the iPhone 3GS off the job market.

It was raining cats and dogs this morning when I decided to get out and give Garmap and Nokia Maps a spin. I needed to pickup a desk diary at the office. In the last few days, I had bookmarked both my office and residence on both applications.

So this test run was more-or-less to see how accurate either applications are in terms of route planning.

Nokia Maps

Nokia Maps was up first. Getting into my car, I launched the application, located my office premises on it and instructed it to guide me there. Nokia maps did a fine job, presenting me with a route to follow.

The voice instructions were on spot with directions such as: “Turn right and then the next right turn“, “Turn right after 355 metres“, “Take the next turn left and you have arrived at your destination“, and as I pulled up in the car park, the soothing female British voice clipped, “You have arrived at your destination“. Yes; that felt good.

In the course of the trip, I decided to play pranks on the application and deliberately disobeyed some turn instructions. Nokia Maps wasn’t fazed. My guide’s voice would simply pip, “Recalculating route”, then re-draw the visual guide and give me another set of instructions.

I know those streets, and can testify that Nokia Maps was very accurate leading me through.

Garmap for Mobile

On completing my task at the office, I launched Garmap for Mobile for the return trip home. It drew up a return route – the exact route Nokia Maps had originally drawn on my way from home earlier.

This time, I headed in the opposite direction. A few seconds later, Garmap told me, “Re-calculating route“, re-drew the on-screen route, and gave me the next turn instruction. The instruction was spot on (I know every street in that area and where they terminate). I disobeyed and kept going.

Another re-calculation and corresponding voice direction. Correct once again. I ignored it and kept going. Every now and then, I would obey one direction, but disobey the next two or three. Each time, Garmap re-calculated correctly and gave accurate voice directions.

I noticed that Garmap got one or two street names wrong (the name of the street you are on is displayed on-screen), but it got all routes and turn instructions correct all the way home.

As I drove up in front of the house, Garmap’s voice direction finally said, “Turn left and you are at your destination“. Well, yes, the entrance to my residence stood to my left!

Conclusions

In this test, I rate both applications equally. Yes; it was a short test, but any navigation system that can acccurately guide anyone through the streets of Ojodu (not VI, Ikoyi, Surulere or Ikeja), where my office is located, deserves a fair score.

Though the weather was cloudy, GPS reception by both applications was good.

If you have any ideas you’d like for me to try out in my series of tests on these two applications, let me know.

I wrote a piece giving my first impressions of Nokia Maps 3.0 a few days ago. I found the app quite good, but it didn’t come with a free licence for visual and voice directions.

Drive navigation, the term that Nokia uses for this, is a premium service requiring a subscription. I decided that in order to give the application a fair review I needed to try Drive Navigation out.

Fortunately, Nokia Maps has a menu embedded that lets users subscribe right on the handset you are using. Well, I dived in there, and was presented with the various subscription plans and fees, as well as a form to enter my credit card details.

In a few moments, I had purchased a 30-day licence. I recieved an SMS receipt:

I had also opted for an email version of the recipt (which contained more details).

The whole order process was smooth and easy. Impressive. Mobile commerce, if done right as in this case, will encourage more mobile users to make purchases right on their devices.

The 30-day subscription costs just N999.00, which is significantly less than most people spend on airtime monthly (Okay, okay; I’m speaking for myself), and it was completed under 5 minutes.

The payment services was handled by Tanla Oy, a company with indian origins that offers end-to-end mobile commerce, mobile entertainment, mobile internet and mobile advertising solutions.

After I entered my licence code in the appropriate menu on the phone, I was ready to go:

I’ll be putting Nokia Maps through its paces over the next few weeks. In addition, I’ll be doing same with Garmap for Mobile, which I also wrote about just yesterday.

Looks like I’ll be having fun for some time. Hopefully, I won’t get myself lost following either application Which is very, very unlikely, judging by what I have seen so far.

In the meantime, kudos to Nokia for making it easy to get a subscription to the Nokia Maps Drive navigation service.

BusinessDay reports that French telecoms operator, Vivendi, has won the bid for African network, Zain.

Another re-branding nightmare for Zain Nigeria?

History: Econet Wireless to Vodacom to Vmobile to Celtel to Zain
Future: Vivendi (?)

If this deal goes through, shall we hope that Vivendi won’t opt to sell out again in another two years?

One thing must be said though, it has been a surprise – and a pleasant one too – how the 0802/0808 network has managed to provide relatively stable services (at least with voice) inspite of the constant corporate skin changes.

Related Article: Another Re-Branding Exercise Looming at 0802/0808?

Earlier on, I took a quick look at Nokia Maps 3.0. Next up is a brief look at Garmap for Mobile, another mobile navigational application that was around weeks ahead of Nokia Maps (contrary to Nokia’s claims to being the first mobile navigation service in Nigeria).

Garmap for Mobile provides street maps for Lagos, FCT Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Warri, and Ota amongst others. The application is available for purchase and installation on Micro SD card. Installation was pretty straightforward, and activation occured over-the-air (OTA) in a matter of minutes. I am running it on the E75, the very same device on which I have Nokia Maps 3.0, making for very good comparisons.

Features on Garmap for Mobile include:

• 3D map view (in Navigate view only)
• Day view and Night view
• On-screen Speed display during navigation
• Where Am I? Presents nearest address, nearest intersection, hospital, police station, and fuel station, current location in terms of latitude and longitude, elevation, and presents option to save this info – all on a screen
• Data Management: feature to track your movements (option to disable)
• Map/Satellite/Terrain modes
• Emergency Contact: a number you can quickly SMS your GPS co-ordinates to in an emergency
• My Contacts: allows you to assign a GPS position to phonebook contacts and/or call them from within Garmap
• Location messaging: Send your exact location in GPS coordinates to another GSM phone
• Recent Finds i.e. history
• Search places and addresses i.e. points of interests
• Voice Guidance, including turn-by-turn directions
• Route simulation: View route and destination on map before embarking on the journey
• Weather forecasts

My personal observation so far is that Garmap has more details on its maps than Nokia Maps 3.0. Having said that, there are streets that are listed on Nokia Maps that are not on Garmap for mobile, and vice-versa.

Though my initial impression is that Garmap for Mobile packs in more value, it may be best to wait till I have put both competing applications through their paces.

Screenshots:

Navigate: 3D View

Jibowu junction in 2D map view

Search results for air transportation facilities in Lagos

Murtala Muhammed International Airport

Adekunle Intersection of the 3rd mainland Bridge

Disclosure: I work for Alireta Nigeria Limited, an authorised dealer of Garmap for Mobile. Yet, I seek to present unbiased reviews in this first impression, comparisons and other reviews of Garmap and other mobile navigation services.

If you are of the opinion that I have been biased, please state so and point to errors in my review to illustrate your point.

There has been a lot of noise about mobile maps and navigational aids of recent – plus there seems to be a face-off between Garmap for mobile and Nokia Maps here in Nigeria.

Yesterday, I gave Nokia Maps a go on the E75 QWERTY smartphone. The version that came built-in on the phone is pretty useless, offering very little besides major highways. What I did was initiate an upgrade to Nokia Maps 3.0 via PC.

The Nokia Maps Updater is available for download to PC at http://europe.nokia.com/explore-services/maps/download. I installed the application, connected the E75 to PC via USB cable and initiated the update.

In a few minutes, I had Nokia Maps 3.0 on the smartphone. Apparently, the service is no longer restricted to just the E71 and the Navigator series.

Things Get Better…
Nokia Maps 3.0 has more detailed maps and features for Nigeria. The application presents a signifacant level of street names and directions. Other features include:

• 3D maps
• My location
• Traffic info
• Map/Satellite/Terrain modes
• Favourites
• History
• Map Screenshot (allows you to take screenshots of the map on the screen)
• Search places and addresses i.e. points of interests
• Voice Guidance

Here are screenshots of various locations in Lagos:

3D view of Jibowu Intersection at Yaba

Search results for airport/helipad facilities in Lagos

3D view of OAS helicopter Services at Maryland, Ikeja

Adekunle Intersection of the 3rd mainland Bridge

I’ll be sure to try out the Drive & Walk feature with voice guidance over the next one month and do a mini-review thereafter.

I was at a Zain shop this morning on some business. During the course of my stay there, I got to know from a representative that official provisioning/activation for Zain full internet (not WAP) is available for a one-time setup fee of N1, 000 only.

If you are a Zain subscriber and have been having issues with getting full internet access on your line, walk into a Zain shop with N1, 000 to request for activation.

According to a news report filed by the Daily Trust on the 30th of June, Globacom announced through its Group Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Mohamed Jameel that they would be crashing the prices of internet connectivity come September.

In the same breath, he also said they would be reducing call rates “with or without the consent of other operators in the country”. This is supposedly being made possible by the completion of Globacom’s fibre optic network across the country.

If this happens, I am sure that it would be welcomed with open arms by the public. One can only hope that quality of service will not be compromised.

I am quite skeptical about the claims to crash internet connectivity tariffs, as no mention was made of the medium by which it would be delivered. What is the point of introducing cheap rates when you have to pay a huge sum, say about N25 – 30, 000 (I’m just guessing here) to buy equipment and sign up?

Unless Glo have changed their ways, the GSM operator might also introduce some stringent measures before one can sign up. If they are going to reduce voice rates without the consent of the other networks, does this mean they will be subsidizing interconnectivity rates and will the NCC grant them the go-ahead? More questions than answers!

All in all, we (eagerly?) await the roll out.

The report is available here.

Back in April, I wrote a piece titled Backup and Synchronize Your Contacts, Pictures, SMS and Calendar with ZYB.

Unfortunately, Zyb has left many subscribers with a bad taste in their mouths. Here is the story.

I needed to synchronise my contacts to a device I was testing, so I logged into my Zyb account two days ago to have the Zyb sync settings sent to the phone by SMS.

The first thing I noticed on logging in was that my account was reading, “Set location”, though I had registered with my full details, including selecting Nigeria as my country way back.

When I clicked through to set my location, presto! – instead of the extensive list of over 100 countries that had been there for years, I met a very concise list of a handful of countries. The majority of countries, who had been on the list before, had been cut-off.

The bad part is that I never got a notification from Zyb that they were pruning their service. Yet, Zyb regularly sent reminders that I haven’t synced my contacts, so it is clear that they have the capacity to notify users of a change of this magnitude. Perhaps they did send the notification, but it got lost in transit?

Anyway, I have suddenly discovered that I have been cut off. So, here I am with 492 contacts in my Zyb account, and I cannot synchronise them with any device at all.

This is NOT the way to provide service. A thumbs-down to Zyb on this one. Oh, yes; and a goodbye too.