Author: Kaluka wanjala

Truecaller today announced that it has reached over 100 million active users. In less than a year, the app has leapfrogged from 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) per month to 100 million daily active users (DAUs), and is growing faster than ever. With more than 20% of its user base in Africa, Truecaller app service identifies more than half a billion calls a monthly in the region, and 50 percent of SMS received are spam. In Kenya the application blocks and filters more than 4.4 million calls and 14 million spam SMSes per month. The world has come a…

Tecno’s most recent camera centric smartphone is the Camon X that was officially unveiled a couple of weeks ago. This phone is competing directly with the OPPO F5 that we have had on the market for a few months now. Given that these phones are marketed as having superior cameras, I decided to take a few shots just to see what they have to offer. The Tecno Camon X is not yet available in Kenya but its price should be around Ksh 20,000 while the OPPO F5 is already available in the country for Ksh 30,000. This is not a…

Google plans to make some changes to Gmail this year and one of them will be “Self-destructing” emails. These emails have been around for sometime now but Google has never incorporated them into Gmail. Some websites offer this option where the emails are deleted once the recipient has opened and read them. Not everyone needs such an option but there are surely those who may be pleased that Google is looking at it. Self-destructing emails are part of Google’s major redesign of Gmail that includes the addition of a “confidential mode” to offer users more security features. Self-destruct is just…

The latest Android Distribution numbers for April paint a not so good picture of the Android ecosystem. The numbers show that the current publicly available version, Android Oreo, has a market share of 4.6%. This means that this version of Android that has been out for about 7 months is installed in less than 5% of all Android devices. This is not a surprise as we have seen this over and over again, adoption of the latest version of Android has never been that high. The reason for the slow adoption has something to do with the device manufacturers. Most…

Sony is not the same smartphone company it was a few years ago. The company is not that popular as it used to be but it still makes some amazing devices. For years, Sony has focused on premium devices with amazing cameras and it still keeps doing this even though it is not as vocal as most other manufacturers. The latest smartphone from Sony is the Xperia XZ2 Premium that the company has unveiled today. The Sony Xperia XZ2 Premium is the first smartphone by the company to come with a dual camera setup. We have seen a good number…

HMD Global is about to add a new Nokia smartphone to its ever-growing portfolio. This new smartphone will be the Nokia X and will be unveiled on April 27 in China. It is not strange for HMD to unveil a new Nokia smartphone in China first before it makes them available in other markets. The company has been doing this ever since the first edition Nokia 6 in 2016. Digital posters of the Nokia X have been spotted in a movie theatre in China and this means that the device exists somewhere and will be unveiled at the indicated date.…

OPPO is expanding its smartphone portfolio with the introduction of the OPPO A71 2018 to the Kenyan market. This is the successor to the A71 that we saw back in 2017 and as with any other OPPO smartphone, the camera is at the centre of it all but is not the only thing it brings to the market. With the OPPO A71 2018, the company has decided to use a Snapdragon processor, the Snapdragon 450 to be exact. This is different from the A71 from 2017 that came with a MediaTek processor. The OPPO A71 2018 in Kenya is available…

Rumour has it that OPPO is getting ready to refresh is F series with the launch of the OPPO F7 in Kenya. My sources tell me that the company plans to officially launch the phone in the country on May 2 but it will be available in retail shops a few days later. I am also meant to understand that those interested will be able to pre-order the OPPO F7 very soon. This will be through Jumia and should start this coming week all the way to the first week of May. No information about the price in known at…

In a further move to optimise its service offering, DPO Group (Direct Pay Online) will be rolling up its Southern African payment service providers (PSP’s) group into the consolidated brand of DPO PayGate. In August 2017, DPO announced its acquisition of PayGate South Africa and Virtual Card Services (VCS) South Africa. The deal followed its previous acquisitions of PayThru and VCS Botswana and Namibia. The consolidated DPO PayGate is now the biggest PSP in Southern Africa and supports payments for tens of thousands of merchants in the region. The broader DPO Group in Africa, collectively services more merchants in more…

The Samsung Galaxy S9+ is the company’s latest flagship smartphone available in Kenya for Ksh 95,000 depending on where you get it from. I am currently reviewing the Galaxy S9+ and will have its full review in a couple of weeks. With that said, I thought it is a good idea to come up with two posts as we wait for the full review. The first post if this one that you are reading and it points out the five things I love about this phone and the second one will talk about the five things I hate about this…