Author: Kaluka wanjala

For a couple of years now, Samsung has not paid attention to the entry level market space. Most of the company’s devices that we have got were either mid or high-end units and this gave an opportunity to some of the Chinese manufacturers to dominate the entry level segment. In 2018, Samsung hopes to change things a bit as the company has just unveiled its first budget smartphone in the country. This smartphone is the Samsung Galaxy Grand Prime Pro (2018), quite a mouthful. The phone was officially unveiled in Kenya yesterday and is available across the county for Ksh…

Tecno Mobile has officially unveiled its first smartphone with an almost bezel-less display in Kenya. We saw this trend with a handful of manufacturers last years and Tecno is finally joining the club with the official unveiling of the Camon CM (See More) in Kenya. The phone is available exclusively on Jumia for Ksh 17,000 but will be available through offline retailers next week. The Tecno Camo CM has the 18:9 aspect ratio that gives you much taller smartphone than we are normally used to. This was a very big trend last year and will be bigger this year. With…

Samsung is re-aligning its business operations in Africa as part of its wider plans to enhance its market share. Addressing business partners during the firm’s 2018 Summit for the region, President & CEO of Samsung Electronics Africa, Sung Yoon has said the firm plans to centralize its operations and resources to be able to introduce greater levels of efficiency on the continent, while focusing more significantly on product, sales and marketing functions. The CEO called on establishment of long term partnerships that enhance business growth for all stakeholders in the industry. He said that there was need to focus more…

LG is this year introducing three new concept robots specifically developed for commercial use at hotels airports and supermarkets. The new “work” robots, to be showcased at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018, represent LG’s commitment to expanding its business into a future growth engine based on its leading robotics technology. The Serving Robot, Porter Robot and Shopping Cart Robot, all part of LG’s new CLOi (pronounced KLOH-ee) robot brand, follow in the footsteps of the Airport Guide Robot and the Airport Cleaning Robot that recently completed successful trial runs at Korea’s Incheon International Airport. The Lawn Mowing Robot and…

Yesterday, Truecaller introduced its latest product, Truecaller Backup for Android, a new feature which allows users to backup and restore their contacts, call history, block list and settings to Google Drive. Every day thousands of Truecaller users are switching to a new phone, getting new SIM card, resetting their device or in general having to start their Truecaller journey anew. This inevitably leads to lost contacts, blank call logs and data gone missing. Truecaller Backup has been one of the most highly requested features by its users, and will simplify a user’s transition to a new phone or SIM card…

When HMD Global brought back the new Nokia smartphones, the company was categorical in saying that it will ensure that these new phones are among the first ones to get the latest Android updates. This is because HMD does not change much in terms of the software and that is why they can work and push the latest updates very fast. Even with this, the company recently announced the Nokia 6 (2018) that came with Android Nougat and not Oreo as we expected. Oreo has been out for a few months and I expected any Nokia smartphones after the Nokia…

If you live in Kenya, you have probably heard about Jamii Telecommunications’ new product, Faiba 4G. The service went live over a month ago and even though it is not available countrywide, it has sparked interest among users mainly because of its affordable data packages. For example, there is a 25GB bundle that can be used within 30 dayse for only Ksh 1,000. This is very cheap when you compare it to products offered by the other players in the market. With Faiba 4G in Kenya, the one area the company has failed is providing users with the information they…

If you still use Skype, you should be happy to know that it is the latest messaging platform to use end-to-end encryption. Skype has partnered with Signal to enable this functionality to its users and be at par with most of the popular messaging services out there. By default, end-to-end encryption will be disabled and those users who want it will have to enable it on their own. Users will be able to enjoy end-to-end encryption for individual chats that Skype is calling Private Conversations. At this point, the option isn’t available for groups and there is no news as…

Samsung will unveil its next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S9 next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This was revealed by the company’s mobile business president DJ Koh. He said this at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) currently ongoing in Las Vegas. This announcement does not come as a surprise as the company unveiled the Galaxy S8 and S8+ last year in March. The company is changing things a bit by unveiling the phone at MWC as it should have been from the beginning. With its unveiling at MWC, the phone will go on sale at a later date…

Android Oreo started rolling out to supported Nexus and Pixel devices about 4 months ago. After that, we saw some manufacturers announce that they had plans to push out the update to their existing devices and some even went ahead to release new devices that came with Android Oreo pre-installed. Given that Android Oreo has been around for at least 4 months, you would expect its market share to be significant but unfortunately it is not. At the moment, Android Oreo is installed in about 0.7% of all Android devices. This is not a small number but is not big…