The battle for differentiation in mobile is at fever pitch. iPhone has the app store, BlackBerry has cut-rate, unlimited internet access, Android has… well… Google and Nokia has a mounting collection of services that includes an extensive, and now entirely free, mapping solution.

Nokia Maps was an early play from the Finnish mobile giant that has put it ahead of the pack when it comes to affordable mapping and navigation on your phone.

The service has been mostly free for some time, offering maps of the world and their updates to Nokia users for gratis. Voice navigation and a few other bits and pieces were levied via subscription, however – but these are now free as part of the re-branded Ovi Maps product announced by Nokia this week. (more…)

With the preview of Google Wave underway there are a lot of questions being asked about the platform, especially surrounding when it will be made available to the public, what new features Google is working on and whether or not more invites are going to be issued for early testers.

I discussed Wave with Lars Rasmussen, a member of Google’s technical team who is based in Sydney where he developed the product with his brother Jens. The audio is available for streaming or download in this post.

[wpaudio url="http://www.simon.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/lars_rasmussen.mp3" text="Talking Wave with Lars Rasmussen"]

The Apple iPhone is possibly the most near-perfect mobile phone product I’ve used. But it does lack some features that I feel are key. Some of them would be challenging to implement while others really should be there and I’m confused that they aren’t. That said, the iPhone also gets flack for missing some things that I honestly couldn’t care less about.

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.
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The first smartphone based on Google’s Android mobile operating system is being launched on September 23 2008, on the same day as the Apple iPhone media launch in South Africa. Available on the T-Mobile network internationally, the HTC Dream G1 should soon be available on local cellular networks.
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In a previous post I said that it was highly unlikely that we would see a legitimate first-generation Apple iPhone release in South Africa. And I was right. Of course, many South Africans have managed to get hold of iPhones via alternative routes, but this option means running an unsupported device that needs to be hacked to work and inevitably costs more than it should.

Rumours circulating on the web now suggest that Vodafone is on the verge of confirming a deal with Apple that will see the iPhone being released in India later this year; around September. (more…)