From 1 April, Vodacom’s iPhone customers no longer have to wade through a long list of voicemails messages by calling 121 to get to the really important one that confirms that new job appointment or bond approval or marriage proposal…

Vodacom’s Visual Voicemail is a South African first voicemail management service for iPhone users, which enables customers to view their voicemail messages in a list format, including the number and time a voicemail came through, the same as with SMS or email messages.

From 1 April to 31 May, customers will be able to try out the product free of charge, while a nominal charge of only R9.99 per month will apply from 1 June. Customers who subscribe to Visual Voicemail for the first time from 1 June will get the first 30 days of their subscription free.

Vodacom iPhone users can use Visual Voicemail to read through a list of their voice messages; highlight the voicemail they want to listen to and, by enabling the speakerphone, listen, re-listen, ignore or delete voice messages in any order they please.

New and saved messages will remain in the customer’s 121 voicemail box for up to 7 days, unless the customer chooses to delete the voicemail message on their Visual Voicemail service which will automatically delete the message on 121.

Visual Voicemail will initially be available to all Contract, Prepaid and Top Up iPhone customers with iPhone Software Version 3 and higher. The service will be available on additional cellphone makes/models in the near future.

Shameel Joosub, Managing Director of Vodacom South Africa, said Visual Voicemail provides Vodacom iPhone users with an ability to, at-a-glance, view all their messages via an efficient and user-friendly interface.

“Visual Voicemail from Vodacom is a first for the South African market and will allow customers one-click access to any voicemail message in any chosen order in their mailbox. One of the great features of Visual Voicemail is that it allows customers to access messages, delete messages and compose messages, in any order they please, without dialing 121.”

iPhone customers can subscribe to Visual Voicemail by sending an SMS with ‘VVM On’ to 123 (FREE) to activate the service and ‘VVM Off’ to deactivate the Visual Voicemail service. Alternatively customers can call Vodacom’s customer care on 111, free from a Vodacom cellphone, or 082 111 from any other phone.

Good news! Thanks Vodacom.

CNN says the app is part of its ‘My South Africa’ brand campaign that was launched two years ago to raise the profile of South Africa to business and leisure travellers in the lead up to World Cup 2010.

The app allows users to view South African city guides, maps, travel tips and World Cup information and view photographs, send messages to friends, find weather and financial information and a range of other things. It’s clearly geared for tourists but should be useful for local users too.

Rani R Raad, senior vice president for advertising sales at CNN International said that the release of the app signified a change in how CNN engages with advertisers and their audience.

“As an in-house commercial team, it’s great to be able to take on the most creative of agencies and capitalise on harnessing the My South Africa concept into a highly relevant application around the biggest football event in the world. We look forward to seeing this App take the brand engagement potential to new heights,” said Raad.

William Prince, global manager of e-marketing for South African Tourism said, “This new iPhone application allows South African Tourism  to offer rich, engaging content that is very specific to the users and presented in a new and dynamic way. The content is fresh, accurate and appropriate for those traveling to South Africa for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, and allows the users to share all their stories and experiences straight from the iPhone.”

“The City Guide, the FIFA information and all of the additional functionality that the application offers, takes our brand to a whole new level. We’re very pleased and excited about the opportunity to do this with CNN Ad Sales and to extend the campaign into the pockets of our consumers,” he added.

The CNN iPhone app was created in conjunction with Turner Commercial Productions and Creative Spark Interactive in South Africa.

The app is linked to the My South Africa website, where there is a link to the free download.

There’s a new cult in town. You might’ve heard about it already. You may even be a member. If you haven’t, and you’d like to preserve the precious little time you have, stay away from PopCap’s new insanely addictive game – Plants vs. Zombies.

I started playing this tower-defence-type title on my Macbook and now it’s spread onto my iPhone. I can’t get enough. I may need help.

The premise of this game is, in a word, awesome. You have a house. Zombies are invading. You must collect sunshine and plant flowers that kill the undead ghouls deader than they already are. Were. Whatever.

Plants vs. Zombies has everything I want in a game – violence, humour, hordes of things to kill… and plants.

The first few levels of the game are set in your front yard where a small variety of zombies need to get smacked apart by a range of angry plants. As the game progresses, and moves from your front to backyard, into the swimming pool and onto the roof, more types of zombies are added, with a variety of resistances, and your collection of plants to tackle them with grows accordingly.

You’ll also get to tackle Zombies in the dark where you must rely on mushrooms and other, more nocturnal undead-killing flora. There’s also money to be collected from dead zombies, and which can be used to buy slaughtering accessories from your crazy virtual neighbour.

The game is available for PC, Mac, iPhone or you can play it online as a flash game. The desktop version costs R185 to register, but you can play for 60 minutes for free, while the iPhone version goes for $2.99 (at time of writing) and requires a US iTunes account.

This title is worth every cent. It’s addictive as hell and, if you have it on your phone, is the perfect diversion while waiting in queues. It steps up to precocious, big-budget titles like Heavy Rain and smacks them in the face with pure awesomeness. It also makes the point, again, that good gameplay trumps sophisticated graphics and physics engines every time. Go get it. Now.

I like it so much I made it my ‘pick of the week’ on the latest episode of the ZA Tech Show.

The app runs on iPhone 3G and 3GS devices and includes a map of Southern Africa from Tele Atlas. It can be downloaded from http://www.tomtom.com/tomtom-app for $79.99 (about R600).

The app also comes with an extensive safety camera database including verified safety camera information. I’m hoping that they’ll be bringing in that wicked cradle too…

According to Navigon, the MobileNavigator software transforms the iPhone into a complete navigation device with turn-by-turn voice directions and features such as adjustable audio-visual speed warnings, branded point of interest icons along the route, direct navigation to contacts saved in the address book and full integration of iPod controls.

MobileNavigator works on the iPhone 3G and 3GS models and requires version 3.0 or later of the iPhone operating system.

The software is priced at $99.99 (about R750), but is being launched at a promotional price of $74.99 until October 15.

Below is a video of the software in action:

The iPhone 3G experienced a similar supply problem which, we are told, is a simple side-effect of overwhelming demand. The 3G ran out of stock shortly after launch and it took Apple weeks to restore a steady supply internationally. This time it’s worse.

The current shortage is being reported in Australia, the USA and most other markets where the 3GS has been launched. In the US Apple has released a widget that becomes available during shortages and can be used to track availability at stores. This was recently disabled, however, which suggests that supply challenges are being alleviated.

I suspect that some demand creation could also be responsible for the wait, whereby Apple trickles stock into the market building up some hype and the impression of exclusivity along the way.

Whether sheer over-demand or intended trickle supply it is reasonable to expect the issue to be sorted out soon. That said, I suspect that when Vodacom does receive stock it will be snapped up quickly, so you might want to get your details down with a supplier if you plan on buying a 3GS.

The following is copied and pasted from an email I received from Vodacom Corporate Affairs:

“Vodacom will launch iPhone 3G S, the fastest most powerful iPhone yet, in South Africa in July 2009. For more information on iPhone 3G S please visit www.apple.com/iphone”

At this stage no further details as to pricing, or availability of tethering, are available. But as soon as I hear anything, so will you.

Apple has indicated that it has 22 partner networks worldwide that will provide tethering (the ability to use your phone’s Internet connection on your computer) from the get-go. AT&T is not one of them, but there is no reason to believe that Vodacom will not allow it, as the company does not provide unlimited data packages for iPhone and allows tethering on its network for other devices. It is a near certainty, in my opinion, that Vodacom, or its holding company Vodafone, is one of Apple’s partners for tethering.

The iPhone 3G S extends the storage capacity of the iPhone range to 32GB, adds a compass, vastly improved 3 megapixel camera with video and other new features. All the details of the device are available here.

The competition is heating up for Apple in the phone space. Most of the touch-phone products that claim to compete with the iPhone are rubbish, but Palm recently unveiled its Pre, complete with new operating system WebOS and implementation of some of the features, like copy and paste, that the iPhone doesn’t have.

Apple was recently awarded a patent for multi-touch however, and it may be able to use this to block the Pre from going to market. I hope that doesn’t happen because competition is a good thing.

Herewith my list of must-have features that the iPhone lacks. With these features the iPhone would be the perfect smartphone for me:

• Copy and Paste: This is something you either need or you don’t. And I do. I use my iPhone for Twitter, Facebook and a range of other services where it would be incredibly handy to use copy and paste – for example, for snipping a URL and pasting it into a Twitter message. It would also help getting around the fact that you can’t forward contacts from your address book, which brings me to my next salient quibble:
• Forwarding contacts from Address Book: On just about every other phone I have owned (even the really old ones) it has been possible to forward contacts from my Address Book as SMS messages. The iPhone just doesn’t do it. Perhaps the whole question of what format to send the contact details in has put Apple off, but vcard is a widely accepted standard, and I would even settle for just plain text with a name and number. It could even ask which number I wanted to send if more than one is saved for a contact.
• Forwarding text messages: The iPhone also does not allow users to forward SMS messages from their inbox – another feature most other phones support. I personally wouldn’t use this feature much, but I feel it should be there.
• Flagging email: I use the iPhone’s email client extensively. I think it rocks. Using an IMAP connection to my Gmail account means I am always up to date on my Macbook, phone and anything else I choose to view my mail with. But I can’t flag mail on the phone – and I wish I could.
• Trial applications: The App Store is the best thing about the iPhone and the prices are more than reasonable for the most part. But I really need to try out applications before I buy them, especially for the more expensive products. Sure there are ratings, but just because 10 other people thought this was a four-star application doesn’t make it the right one for me. Even a 24-hour trial would be OK – but I must be able to try before I buy.
• Respect for South African users: This is my biggest gripe. We can’t use Google Maps for navigation or directions in South Africa because Google doesn’t have good data for our road network. There are no games in the South African App Store because Apple refuses to pay the relevant licensing costs to make them available in the country. The podcast directory is also blocked to South African store accounts – there is no reason for this, it is just an error that Apple can’t be bothered to fix. And yet I have it on good authority that Vodacom has sold almost 50 000 iPhones in the country and the iPod does better in SA than it does in some European territories. I’m tired of being treated like a second-rate citizen because Apple can’t get its act together in developing markets. Apple: we love your products and we buy them en mass. It’s high-time you gave us some love. And while you’re at it, can we please have music in the iTunes Store too?

My only other gripe is with iPhone application developers who don’t use notification and push services to keep the apps on my phone up to date. This is a brilliant solution that Apple has offered developers, unless I’m missing something. The Facebook application, for example, could receive updates from my account and push these down to my device where I would be notified, instead of me having to open the application to see if I have new notifications. Perhaps any app developers reading this could explain to me why nobody uses the service? Fring? TwitterFon?

It’s only fair to also include a list of things I DON’T miss. Some people complain about these, but I regard them as non-issues:

• MMS: Get over it kids – you don’t need MMS. You might think you do, but you don’t. If you take a picture with your phone I’d rather that you email it to me. The iPhone has a great email application and I can’t understand why you would want to use MMS instead. MMS is a horrible standard that hardly ever works properly and is used to send annoying adverts from network operators. Not only do I not miss it, I don’t want it. And if your phone can’t do email then it’s time for an upgrade anyway.
• Better camera: As cellphone cameras go, the iPhone’s is good. Megapixels don’t mean much if you have a crap lens and the 2 megapixel camera on the iPhone will take better pictures than many other phones with 3.2 or even 5 megapixel cameras that have shoddy lenses. The lack of a flash doesn’t bother me either as I am yet to see a decent implementation of a flash on a phone – they’re usually little LED lights that achieve very little besides perhaps giving snipers something to aim at.
• Persistent applications: There isn’t much to say here. I don’t really need to run more than one application at the same time – but I do need iPhone app developers to start using notification and push services from Apple that would allow for notifications to be provided even if the application isn’t running. Windows Mobile phones let you run more than one app at a time, as does Symbian – and it’s messy. Memory is constantly full, it makes the phone run slower and remembering to terminate applications which otherwise stay resident is a ballache.

I’ll be at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona next month and look forward to hunting down the Palm Pre and comparing it to the iPhone. For now, however, I’ll stick with Apple. I love BlackBerry devices and the Nokia E71 is one of the hottest phones I have ever used, but the iPhone still reigns supreme in my universe. Each to their own.

The truth is that Vodacom seemingly has no idea when the iPhone will be available locally. Sources within the company have speculated that it may even be as late as October.

You can, however, pre-order the iPhone on the Vodacom website. Vodacom has even embedded an iPhone advertisement into its site’s header that links to the order page.

Vodacom is obviously taking the lead from Vodafone in terms of local availability. Vodafone, in turn, will undoubtedly have trouble keeping up with the demand for the iPhone across multiple regions and will have to juggle stock availability and release dates to ensure that it doesn’t sit with disgruntled customers across the globe.

That said, Vodacom must have some indication, albeit vague, of when the phone will arrive if it has made pre-orders available. If you ask Vodacom, however, they will merely tell you that they can’t say anything at this stage. Which is understandable, since the decision relies on extenuating factors beyond Vodacom’s control.

So unfortunately we have no real indication of local availability or pricing at this stage, except that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the eight gigabyte version of the phone will not be available anywhere in the world for more than $199 on contract. The price announcement by Jobs was a clever marketing ploy, but really means very little to potential buyers as your contract instalments could be anything, as could the retail out-of-contract price, should that even become an option in South Africa.

My friend Ben Kelly at Finweek has speculated that the local iPhone contract will be similar to the modelling of the Blackberry contracts available from Vodacom, but this is just educated guess-work.

Anyone who claims to know when the iPhone will arrive in South Africa and what it will cost at this stage is either lying or works very high up the ladder at Vodacom or Vodafone. Then again, I doubt that even executives at either company could provide definitive answers at this stage. July seems optimistic, but not impossible. Sometime around September may be more likely.

Yesterday I reported that the iPhone will be arriving in South Africa on July 20, based on information Stuff editor Toby Shapshak posted to his blog on The Times website. This information was wrong, however, as the official South African iPhone site announces that the phone will arrive on July 11.

Last night Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the 3G iPhone release as well as the iPhone 2.0 operating system update with new features and access to third party applications.

“Just one year after launching the iPhone, we’re launching the new iPhone 3G that is twice as fast at half the price,” said Jobs. “ iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync right out of the box, runs the incredible third party apps created with the iPhone SDK, and will be available in more than 70 countries around the world this year.”

And on that list of countries is South Africa, where the iPhone will be available on the Vodacom network via a ten-country deal signed with shareholder Vodafone. No further details of the local release of the device have been announced.

Ok, so we were only off by 9 days. But to those who have been waiting patiently for this device since its launch into the USA market one year ago every day counts