Nokia sure knows how to heat up the airwaves, yesterday at Nokia World 09 we saw the release of 3 great new symbian handsets The X6, X3 and N97 mini. Then to top off the day Nokia gave more info on 2 brilliant new products that are going to change the mobile industry forever. The Nokia Booklet 3G and N900.

The Nokia booklet 3G, is a Windows 7 based machine which comes jam packed with 120 Gig harddrive an Intel Atom processor, 10.1-inch HD display, Bluetooth, Wifi, hot swappable 3G, GPS and a built in SD card reader. To sweeten the deal it comes with a 12 hour battery life. Nokia says the recommended retail price should be about €575.00 (R6270.00) Not bad for this dream machine.

The Nokia N900 is the first linux based mobile handset delivered by Nokia. This uber cool device comes with a 3.5 inch touch-sensitive widescreen display, 1GB of application memory, 32Gigs of onboard storage (space for an addition 16gigs via SD plugin), Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and much much more. I think this is possibly the hottest handset to come from Nokia this yearbut don’t take my word for it though, checkout the video below and decide for yourself.

Nokia fans will be happy to know that the Nokia X6 comes with music will hit our shelves by November 09. Sadly though there is still no word on when we will see the Nokia booklet 3G or N900.

The launch of the much anticipated Seacom cable into South Africa has for a long time been a hot topic. Some folks thought there would be a price war and others said it would take months to see any price reductions.

Well the good news fringsters is that the price wars have started and this the day before the official launch of the Seacom Cable. The very first contender in the ring, the boys and girls of G-Connect, who today announced that they would reduce their ADSL rate by 25% in anticipation of the Seacom cable launch which is scheduled for Thursday 23 July 2009.

The G-connect “price drop sees prepaid ADSL access rates decrease from 6.5c per MB to 4.9c per MB and during its happy-hour (between 5pm and 8pm daily) decrease to 4.5c per Mb from 4.7c per MB.”

Further good news for fringsters is that if you provision your 3G simcard with G-connect you can surf in 3G from your mobile device at rates far below the standard out of bundle network rate of R2 per MB. The G-connect standard 3G rate is 62c per MB and during their happy hour (5-8pm) it drops to 55c per MB. G-connect is a relatively new player in the market and these new rates are not bad for the new kid on the block if I may say so.

The G-connect team seems to be on the ball at the moment, they recently called me up and offered to send me a preconfigured simcard to trial the service and you can be sure I will let you guys know how the service performs.

Let the price war begin

fring’s new WeFi add-on provides you with easy and free access to millions of Wi-Fi hotspots straight from your mobile devices, saving you valuable time looking for somewhere to logon, and providing you with affordable internet access while traveling either locally or internationally, for business or leisure.

To get the new WeFi add-on on your Symbian or Windows Mobile Device, you’d need to download fring’s latest version here. In order to locate and access millions of hotspots in your area, simply subscribe to the WeFi add-on from the add-ons tab within fring and start locating Wi-Fi hotspot closest to you, automatically, using your handset’s GPS, or manually by typing in any address worldwide.

Developers can start creating their own add-on’s today by using fring’s developers site where they’ll find the fring API documentation, code samples and open source add-ons (twitter and last.fm) which they can use to leverage their current web expertise (e.g. PHP, .NET, Java) to create their own mobile internet applications using the same tools they’d use to create any web application.
[Check this YouTube for more details]

iPhone fringsters wanting to boost their fring talk time by up to 7hours a day, listen up.

Mophie.com is now offering via pre-order a new “juice pack” that easily plugs onto your iPhone 3G. “The Juice Pack is a rechargeable lithium polymer battery in the form of a non-slip, soft grip case” and the manufacturer says the juice packs will extend talk time on your iPhone by about 6-7hours a day.

Extend the time that you can use your iPhone 3G in these ways (additional hours):

• Standby Time – Up to 350 hours
• Talk Time – Up to 6 hours on 3G | Up to 12 hours on 2G
• Internet Use – Up to 6 hours on 3G | Up to 7 hours on Wi-Fi (fring uses WiFi)
• Audio Playback – Up to 28 hours
• Video Playback – Up to 8 hours

Something tells me these juice packs are going to sell really fast so to avoid the que pre-order yours today.

Having recently returned from an amazing two week vacation in Namibia, I thought it good to update everyone on the state on 3G and WiFi access in Namibia.

While in Namibia I decided to thoroughly test the local networks and made use of both MTC and Cellone.

What I noticed from only a few days in the country is that the cellular rates are much much better than the local South Africa cellular providers! MTC for instance offers 100 free SMS’s a day while Cellone charges only 5c per SMS. Calls were also much cheaper with Cellone offering calls at only 49c per minute between Cellone customers.

The second thing I noticed that actually impressed me was that Namibia had 3G coverage in almost every town we passed through. MTC being the stronger network had the most 3G coverage with Cellone only having 3G in a few towns. On a positive note Cellone had GPRS coverage in some of the locations where MTC had nothing.

Another thing that impressed me about Namibia was the WiFi access. After searching and searching for good WiFi I finally found out that telecom Namibia offered a service called wi-space. All you do is purchase a wi-space voucher and then wherever you see the wi-space logo (more than 40 locations in Namibia) you can tune in for Wi-Fi access. The WiFi is sold at a rate of R20.00 for 45min usage.

Alternatively good WiFi access was also available at the Protea Hotel in Walvis Bay and a few other accommodation venue’s across the country.

Below are a few tips for fringsters planning to visit Namibia.

1. When in Namibia switch to either MTC or Cellone. Pre-paid simcards are relatively cheap (R30.00 and come with a few rands airtime). International data roaming rates are extremely high. Both MTC and Cellone charge only R1.00 per MB for data.
2. If your handset has the ability to switch dual mode off then do it. I found the network constantly switched between 3G and GPRS which caused issues when making calls. To switch dual mode on or off click > Menu > Tools > Settings > Network > Switch dual mode off. Don’t forget to switch it on again when you are not in 3G coverage.
3. Having a car charger handy is always a good idea and in Namibia, this is a must! If you get stuck on the open road somewhere, you will die, so always have enough water with you, 10L is enough and make sure your cellphone battery is always full? The network coverage on most roads is very poor so be prepared to walk for coverage if you get stuck.
4. Always stick to the main tar roads, unless you drive in convoy. The main tar roads are usually quite busy, however the dusty back roads are very quiet. On one of the days we traveled 400km and only saw 3 cars the entire day. At times this can be nerv recking (especially when the trust fringmobile gets stuck and you have no back up car.. oops
5. Very important, please make sure that whatever you do, you do it safely.

All in all Namibia is a great country with even better 3G access.

ore news from Italy is that Scientists in Pisa, “claim to have set a new world record for the fastest wireless data transmission. They report that during an uninterrupted 12-hour experiment, they were able to achieve throughput speeds above 1.2 Terabits per second; which they say beats the previous wireless data transmission speed record of 160 Gigabits per second by Korean scientists. The researchers claim that speeds of this magnitude can typically only be achieved using fiber optics.” hothardware.com

During the test “Data was transmitted using Free Space Optics (FSO), blinking lasers or LEDs that act like fiber optics without the fiber.” engadget.com

“One of the biggest challenges that free space optical communications faces-whether in space or on Earth-is that communications are limited to line-of-site. Unlike some radio communications, free space optical communications requires that no obstacles interfere with the beam, and it cannot bend around objects.” hothardware.com

“The Pisa team is made up of scientists from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa, Waseda University in Tokyo, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo.”

It’s great to see such rapid development in the field of high speed Wifi and I long for the day when we can all make fring calls using a 1.2 Terabit connection.