The recent statement by the Inspector General of Police that Nigerians should not take pictures with their mobile phones during the forthcoming April 2011 elections must be a national embarassment. Beyond that, it simply smells fishy. How can the police boss attempt to ban tools that should help make useful information available for him to get his job of maintaining law and order done more properly? Perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye?

Egypt, Tunisia, Anyone?
Recent events in countries like Egypt and Tunisia have demonstrated the power of the modern mobile phone. When we say that the mobile phone is inherently superior to the PC, we are not parroting a misguided notion. It is the truth – always-on, extremely portable, and multi-purpose, very few devices could have helped make possible the political revolutions that took place in those nations.

Here in Nigeria, while no such revolution is going on (yet), the mobile phone is set to help trigger a new phase of electoral monitoring. And no amount of directives from the IG or anyone else in authority will halt this. The Constitution of this country is clear about the freedom of citizens, and no-one should allow the utterances of the IG to hold them back from taking pictures, recording videos and sending updates via mobiles from voting booths across the country.

We hereby encourage you to download and install the ReVoDa app on your phones for reporting detailed info about happenings at your polling booths.

ReVoDa allows voters to report as independent citizen observers from their respective Polling Units across Nigeria, having registered to map their mobile number, name and polling unit number to specific locations. It also allows EiE Nigeria to send relevant information about the electoral process to registered users. You can download the ReVoDa app.

Beyond using ReVoDa, from the night of Friday, April 1st, Mobility Nigeria will be publishing updates sent in by our readers of happenings at polling stations nationwide. You will be able to post your comments directly, mail in your pictures and videos, or send in your updates via basic SMS. The idea is that you have the opportunity to use the power of the mobile phone to help make things happen

Let’s make it happen!

President and CEO of Nokia Corporation, Stephen Elop says Nokia’s new smartphone strategy is the catalyst that will help the mobile giant penetrate the U.S market and other markets where Nokia is not a dominant player. Stephen Elop was speaking in Dubai during a media roundtable with journalists drawn across the Middle East and Africa. He said everything was being put in place to ensure that the Nokia Windows Phone gives consumers a delightful experience. He was however not specific on when consumers across the world should expect the official release of the smartphone. Mr Elop disclosed that priority markets would be considered first before other markets.

On Ovi store which is nokia’s proprietary platform for applications, games, navigation and other services, Mr. Elop maintained that the platform would not be discarded in the wake of the emergence of Nokia Windows phones. Mr Elop also mainteained that low-end devices built on Symbian will continue to compliment the smartphone strategy. Nokia dominates the global mobile phone market globally but is now a challenger in the smartphone category

The Nokia CEO said he was very pleased with the contribution of the Middle East and Africa market to Nokia’s overall corporate performance. He said such contribution will be matched with appropriate investment.

Mr Elop was very optimistic about the Nokia’s prospects in the global mobile industry. He stated that he had received tremendous support and goodwill from partners, telecom operators, consumers and nokia staff in his bid to evolve a new strategic direction for the mobile giant.

Nokia is the world’s number one manufacturer of mobile devices by market share. Beyond its leadership status as a manufacturer of devices, Nokia is fast becoming a leading solutions provider in the converging Internet and communications industries providing internet services that enable users to experience media, messaging, maps and games. It recently launched the Nokia E7, which is considered one of the smartest phones on the Nokia stable.

Osagie Ogunbor
Head of Communications
Nokia West Africa

Don’t you just love your Nokia smartphone? I love mine. With all the talk going around about how awesome Blackberry, iPhone and Android phones are, the Nokia Symbian Series 60 phones e.g. Nokia E71, E72, E5, E65, are winners always, even till now.

If you do not have a nokia series 60 phone now, you should go ahead and pick one now. Why? Read on. I am using nokia E71 as my case study.

The main reason I am writing this article is to help mobile phone users see that they may not need to spend so much on a smartphone if their budget is very low.

This is especially true with start-ups and small businesses. Why would you rather get a data gobbling device or an expensive device if a lowly Nokia Series 60 phone can get the job done?

For the tech junkie this might sound very boring. But, on a second thought, won’t you be doing yourself a great favour if you save some cash for other stuffs?

I am recommending the Nokia S60 for the following reasons:

1. Nokia S60 devices do multitasking well. You can work with some other applications while the previous one is still running.
2. You can expand the memory card and store more apps, music and some other files.
3. Messaging. You have Nokia messaging. It pushes your email directly to your phone. I have my Yahoo email and my Google email set up, and they do not disappoint.
4. More Messaging. Plus, if you want to do SMS-stylemessaging across platforms, you can install a third party app called Whatsapp to message with iPhone, Android, Blackberry and other Nokia users.
5. This is Africa and Nigeria. You know we have power supply problems. The Nokia E65, E5, E71, E72 (all S60) do not consume as much power as most competing products, plus you can get an extra battery for it if you care.
6. If you are a social media junkie like me, knock yourself over with Nimbuzz and Snaptu app. With Nimbuzz, you have access to instant messaging (Yahoo, Gtalk, Windows Live, etc), Twitter, and VOIP calls too. Snaptu allows you to connect to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and some more. Snaptu has its own app store embedded with it.
7. You can go ahead and include Opera Mini and Opera Mobile in the list of available 3rd party apps that add value to your smartphones. With this, you can do almost everything you do on the web. I stream Youtube video with my Nokia E71 powered by Airtel’s 2G/EDGE network. Its streams well using the pre-installed Real player app.
8. I also read my popular blogs and sites with RSS reader via Snaptu app. It is easy and fun. When I see great contents that need to be shared to Facebook or Twitter, I share directly from the RSS reader.

All the above are available at the fraction of the cost of devices from other platforms. S60 devices are great at saving cost and maximizing benefits.

Go ahead, enjoy your Symbian S60 device. If you pick up a new one for yourself, you are not making a wrong choice. I am still rocking my Nokia E71, a typical Symbian S60 device.

What cool stuff have you done with your Nokia Series 60 device of late?

Which of these points I shared would you be trying?

Our mobileRave magazine generated a lot of buzz before its launch, and we are happy to tell you that it hasn’t lost its steam.

Since it became widely available, we have had quite a number of new readers of our blog who are also becoming regulars. We thought we’d stir things up a bit some more and get more people in on the fun and excitement. Please don’t miss out, as mobileRave will continue to improve.

A quick run-down again: mobileRave magazine is a quarterly 12-page full-colour electronic publication, presenting consumer-targeted information on mobile devices and services in Nigeria, including prevailing voice, SMS and data tariffs, plans and configuration settings. Our popular Guide to Mobile Internet Usage in Nigeria is now part and parcel of mobileRave mag.

For just N2,000 per year (4 editions), you will be getting a loaded package and helping to support your favourite mobile news website. What are you waiting for? Join the exclusive club now by subscribing to mobileRave magazine.

The highly anticipated business smartphone, Nokia E7, is now available first through a preorder before it becomes available in Retail. The Nokia E7 is the true emblem of success and class. The E7 supports business applications from leading enterprise technology partners including Microsoft and IBM, as well as a wide range of entertainment and multimedia services and features, combining to make the Nokia E7 the perfect companion at work and at play.

Pre-order in Nigeria

Residents of Nigeria can now pre-order a copy of the E7 through www.gtbank.com/nokiae7 or www.quickteller.com.ng/nokiae7

Win a Nokia E7!

While the pre-order is on, you can also win a free Nokia E7 on Mobility Nigeria. All that you need to do is tell us the most creative thing that you have ever done with your Nokia phone. Any Nokia phone.

The winning entry will be selected by a joint decision of Nokia West Africa and Mobility Nigeria. So, start posting away!

The popular BlackBerry Messenger has been updated to version 5.0.2.12.

You can download the update directly from the BlackBerry AppWorld on your device or download via PC.

Symbian users who are fans of Windows Phone 7′s Metro UI can have some feel of it on the new range of Symbian smartphones – Nokia N8, C7, and E7 inclusive.

All you have to do is install the Symbian Phone 7 theme. There are no live tiles, but all standard icons are replaced with blue squares.

Go ahead: give it a go. Download Symbian Phone 7

• first major Symbian3 update will arrive in summer, delivering a new home screen, new icons, a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps. Some of these already on the Nokia C7 Astound
• +1GHz CPU smartphones on the way
• markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey will enjoy the longest term Symbian focus
• Symbian smartphones will run alongside Nokia WindowsPhones for some time

The image to the right is of the upcoming Symbian UI icons.

The Nokia E7 may be a business-targeted device and feature only an 8 megapixel full-focus camera, but don’t let that fool you about its video recording capabilities. This sleek Aluminium messenger packs HD video recording that is crisp and clear, and the audio capture is just as good.

The E7 camera offers video stabilisation, and allows you to zoom up to 3x while shooting 720p resolution at 25 fps without losing any video quality. The Nokia E7 records in MP4 format. Here is a clip from a video recording I did over the weekend.

The camera is not so excellent in for close-ups in low-level light (see the footages of people under the canopy), but really shines for distances of abuve 2-3 metres in clear light (see the outdoor plants and items towards the end of the clip). This looks like an excellent camera for outdoors recording. The text caption at the end was added on the device itself.

PS: To see the quality of the video below, you need to view in 720p. Immediately playback starts, click on the ’240p’ or ’360p’ legend and change it to full ’720p HD’ and then click on the ‘full-screen’ option. If possible, view in full screen.

Apparently, part of the new user interface that Nokia has in store for their Symbian range (and other phones) is a new, minimalist font that they plan to spice things up even more.

According to the director of brand and marketing for Studio Nokia:

“Nokia Pure is a celebration of our Finnish design heritage. We wanted to give it a natural, flowing form, while creating something that is highly functional and neutral. Nokia Pure has a clarity of purpose and as little design as possible. It’s made to celebrate human creativity.”

Lots of work must have gone into creating this font, as it has to support the scores of languages (and their unique characters) that Nokia phones support across hundreds of countries around the world. No mean feat.

Nokia Pure is being developed by Dalton Maag, a London typography and design house. It looks like it will soon be time to wave the Nokia Sans (used by default on current Nokia phones) goodbye.

Seeing that the promised PR2.0 update for Symbian3 smartphones has been delayed significantly, it will be refreshing to see the new font shipping with the update when eventually it is released.

On January 15th of this year, Yomi wrote a piece that I personally think deserves an award. He actually told manufacturers, developers and others who do not support Nigeria to go to blazes. It was a really bold and daring move, and I must say that I salute Yomi for standing against such nonsense.

Whether you think that the opening up of Blackberry AppWorld to Nigeria was directly linked to that article or not is irrelevant. The fact remains that it was opened up after the article was written and Nigerians are the better for it.

Google’s Android Market is another system that has remained partially closed to Nigeria. You see, while users of Android devices in Nigeria can download free apps from the market, they are unable to buy paid apps because Nigeria is not on the list of supported countries.

Recently, however, I visited the web version of the Android Market and noticed that not only was I able to view paid apps, the prices of those apps were listed in Naira, with the Naira image properly displayed.

Of course, I was still not able to pay for apps (I was presented with a PayPal payment page when I clicked through to purchase but have no PayPal account). Perhaps any of our Android fans here with a PayPal account can give it a shot?

Note that you need to have an Android phone currently associated with your Market account or you will be asked to sign in with a different account.

Can we take this as a sign of progress?

Dennis Bournique of WapReview.com is someone that I hold in high esteem in the mobile web world. He has had hands-on time with the Nokia C7 Astound which has some of the Symbian PR2.0 firmware pre-installed. One of those features is the new browser, and he has taken the pains to run certain performance tests (javascript and HTML5) on this.

Here, I quote Dennis on the performance of the new Symbian browser:

1. I’m pretty happy with the new “pre-PR 2.0″ Symbian browser on the T-Mobile Astound version of the C7. Not only is the user interface nicer and the feature set improved but browsing seems a lot faster than the E7/N8 browser.
2. The new Symbian browser did significantly better than the old one on the HTML5 tests but still lags the competition. I’ve been hearing for months that the new browser would include geoocation support so I was surprised that both test suites reported it missing in the new Symbian browser. An indication perhaps that this isn’t the final PR 2.0 browser.
3. I’m impressed that the new Symbian browser essentially matched Opera Mobile which is noted for its JavaScript performance on all platforms.

You should head over to WapReview for the full JavaScript Benchmarks and HTML5 Test Results of the New Symbian Browser.