Author: Kaluka wanjala

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…

Over the years, M-Pesa has become a household name in Kenya as mobile money becomes a vital part of our economy. M-Pesa’s penetration is so deep that most other companies looking to get into the mobile money game in other countries tend to reference what and how Safaricom has been able to get it to where it is today. Kenya is not the only country with a significant number of people using mobile money but we surely are among the top countries and this is thanks to M-Pesa. Mobile money has experienced a decade of transformative growth according to the…

If you have been following the trends in smartphone cameras, then you have probably heard about the portrait mode otherwise known as Bokeh effect. This is where you have the camera focus on a subject and blur the background. The subject in focus draws all the attention as what is in the background is not easily visible. This feature is available in most smartphone cameras released in the last year or so and is mostly available on the rear camera but some front facing cameras also have it. For Instagram, this feature is too good to ignore and that is…

As technology becomes part of our everyday lives, it makes sense for developers and technology companies to come together and find ways to use technology to solve problems. Most countries tend to have similar problems but the solutions used vary from region to region. We have seen global player try to solve Kenyan problems with global solutions and sometimes these do not work. Sometimes there needs to be a local approach to solving problems. For Microsoft, this can be done through the Imagine Cup Competition that gives students opportunities to come up with solutions to local problems and showcase them…

If you are an active user of any of the mobile money services in Kenya, you probably already know that you can now send and receive money across Safaricom and Airtel networks. For the longest time, users could send money across networks but the recipient only got a text message that he/she was to take to an agent for withdrawal. This was a cumbersome process and discouraged many users from going with this option unless they absolutely had no alternative. With Mobile Money interoperability now live in Kenya, those on Airtel can send and receive money from M-Pea users. You…

If you spend a lot of time online, you may have come across websites or apps with videos that start playing as soon as you open the homepage. Some people like this and others hate it but it is one of the features that will not be going away anytime soon. If you use YouTube on your Android phone, you should be ready to deal with autoplaying videos when on the homepage. YouTube has been experimenting with this feature for a while now and is ready to roll it out to all users. This feature isn’t as bad as some…