New smartphones from HTC, including the Legend and Desire are schedule for launch in South Africa on 12 April 2010. These and a range of other new models from the Taiwanese manufacturer were announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona in February.

The Desire is comparable to the Nexus One, which is manufactured by HTC and sold by Google. There are still no plans to launch the Nexus One in SA, but the Desire is a practically identical phone with the same 3.7″ AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera and, most importantly, Android 2.1 operating system that you’ll find on the Nexus One. (more…)

The Apple iPhone 3G S was unveiled last night by Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of WorldWide Product Marketing, at the annual WWDC keynote. I received confirmation from Vodacom, the local supplier of the iPhone, that the iPhone 3G S will launch in South Africa in July.

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.

When it was announced the 3G iPhone would be made available in South Africa via Vodacom, I posted suggesting that it would arrive around 11 July. This was not a guess – Apple’s website listed the arrival date for South Africa as 11 July. The website has since been altered to simply say ‘coming soon’ and Vodacom seems to think that the media is responsible for the perception that the Jesus phone will arrive in July. The truth is that if anyone is to blame for the misconception it is Apple, along with Vodafone, the latter of which issued a press release internationally, stating that South Africa was in a group of 11 countries to receive the phone from July onwards.

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.
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Please read my latest post on the availability of the iPhone in South Africa before adding an inane comment to this one. Thanks. And hi.

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