Last week my good friends Vincent Maher and Nic Haralambous,invited me to a sneak peak at a new mobile game developed by Vodacom called Legends of Echo. Vince and Nic just happen to look after Vodacom’s Social Media, and together re-launched the Grid (a mobile location based social network) last year with great success. Legends of Echo is the first mobile phone location based online social game to be made in South Africa. Basically you play the game in a parallel virtual universe based on the South African map. Instead of cities and skyscrapers, however, players will find rolling green fields and rocky outcrops to explore and establish their base. From there players choose a tribe (Fire, Water, Earth, Air, or Industry) and can battle each other to gain “Legend points”. Players can trade and purchase weapons, armour and other items, as well as chatting to players live whilst in the game. Players locations in real life are duplicated in the game using Vodacom’s location based services. Live score boards of all players “Legend” points are kept, the aim being to top the score board. Prizes and bonus items etc will be given out periodically to top players. At present the game is only available to handsets that play Java games, i.e most Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung phones. No smart phones like iPhone, or Google Android handsets are supported for now, However a Blackberry version is in the works so expect other mobile devises to be covered in the near future when the game takes off. To download Legends of Echo for free just visit http://legendsofecho.com ( The Game will work with any network provider, your normal data charges apply). To read the full press release just click here To read the game facts sheet click here.   

Yesterday Microsoft announced the release of two new phones aimed at online social network addicts. The range is called “KIN” (See pics below) and consists of the Kin 1, and the Kin 2.

The Kin 1 has a 20×240 screen, 5 megapixel camera, VGA video recording and 4GB of non-expandable storage. The Kin 2 is larger and has a 480×320 screen, 8 megapixel camera, 720p video recording, and 8GB non-expandable storage. Both are touch phones and contain the Zune software to handle music and video. They both have Facebook, Twitter and Myspace built into their cores to make sharing and networking as easy as possible. The Kin’s also have a cloud based website called the Studio where all contacts, music, pictures and social network updates are synced and kept up to date !

To read more on the phones go to www.kin.com. The KIN will be available from @Verizon in the US this spring & from @VodafoneUK in the UK, Germany, Spain & Italy by autumn 2010. (Prices TBC)

To launch the phones Microsoft and Agency Two Fifteen have set out to answer the question “Are your friends really your friends?”. To find this out they found a young, non actress,  lady called Rosa.

Rosa has 824 friends on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace and has been sent across the states to visit her social network in person. A film crew will be following her as she sets out to meet the so-called “friends” in her online social media circle.

The first episode will go live on the 3rd May. Visit the dedicated Kin Facebook, twitter and YouTube pages to stay up to date as Rosa’s journey continues.

For the last week Sony Ericsson made one of my wishes come true and lent me one of their first production model new Xperia X10 touch phones. I last wrote about this phone when it was announced last November and finally its here.

This in my view is the best phone Sony Ericsson have come up with yet. The basics are that its a full touch screen Google android based phone, with a host of clever custom SE software such as Timescape™ and Mediascape. The main gist of these software enhancements are to bring all your social networks together and make them work together in harmony, saving you time and keeping you up to date with what’s happening. With this I can say they have succeeded, in no small way thanks to the built in 1ghz processor (only a few years ago that was great for a PC !). Go to the X10’s home page to check out a demo for yourself here.

My highlights have been the following:

• Twitter and Facebook aggregating to phone contacts (i.e. When I look up a contact it shows me all their status updates, photo’s and events in one place)
• The 8.1mp Camera: This is a great camera, as well as taking great pictures it also picks up peoples faces and allows you to tag them to contacts right away
• Android marketplace: Much better that I expected, tones of games and other tools and gadgets to keep me happy.
• The design and screen: The phone’s screen looks great, and with the rubber textured back it’s very ergonomically friendly.
• USB charging, and easy syncing with your computer works great. Contacts can be backed up online and synced with facebook, Google, and outlook.
• Battery life is good for a handset of this type, think 2 days of normal use and 1 day of heavy online use (WiFi, bluetooth, & 3G data transfers drain it).
• Contrary to what I have read on other sites the touch keyboard works great (with the feedback enabled it makes it even better). I can only assume the other test handsets had pre-production software.

To sum it up if you’re in the market for a new intelligent phone handset that does it all, the X10 is worth a serious look. Email, photos, social networking, and lest we forget making calls are all a pleasure with the new Sony Ericsson X10.

For full specs go to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 page here.

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Probably the most anticipated phone from Sony Ericsson for years has been the new Xperia X10, and now it has a baby brother and sister in the form of the X10 Mini and X10 Mini Pro. The only differences between the two are that the Pro has a slide out qwerty keypad, is slightly larger, and is available in Black and red rather than all the other colours for the regular mini shown below. First hands on tests show this phone is fast and pretty much good to go (click here for a hands on test video). These two touch screen Android phones feature Sony Ericsson’s new signature application Timescape™ which brings all communication together in one place so users can see at a glance text messages, missed calls, and Facebook™ and Twitter updates, without having to open lots of different applications.  The interactive music player also uses an “infinite button” to pull together all music content from the music store and YouTube™ – a smart way to search for new tracks from a favourite artist. The phones will be available for release in the second quarter of this year. Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. If they live up to the hype the X10 range will be the phones that secure Sony Ericsson’s future as one of the world’s top handset manufacturers.   Main Specs:

• Android 1.6 operating system, with 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor
• 5mp camera.
• 4 Custom corner shortcut keys
• 2.5-inch QVGA touchscreen
• WiFi, Bluetooth (A2DP),
• Micro USB connector and 3.5mm headphone jack
• Sony Ericsson Timescape™, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync®,
• A-GPS, Android Market™, Google Talk™, Google Voice Search™
• 128mb built in memory, 2GB microSD™ memory card inc in box

For the full Sony Ericsson press release click here 

         Sony Ericsson very kindly lent me their new Entertainment Unlimited branded phone called the Aino over the festive season and so I thought I would finally share with you my thoughts on it. To make things simple I have broken it down into my likes and dislikes. Likes: Firstly the Aino has a fab 3” hi-res touch screen, when the slider is closed the touch screen works very well allowing you to easily browse pictures, music, movies or radio. The keyboard and user interface are up the usual easy and logical to use Sony Ericsson standards. The phone also comes with a nice built in 8GB  Micro SD card, great Bluetooth headphones (great speakerphone too) and a very neat charging dock. It was also very easy to connect up to my laptop and sync all the contacts as well as working great as a mobile modem (wireless or wired took only a few minutes to set up). I didn’t get a chance to try out the Playstation 3 remote play feature, I’m more of an Xbox chap, but this feature allows you to stream music and films stored on your PS3 wirelessly to your Aino anywhere in the world !. Finally the Aino is also remarkably durable, after a couple of months heavy use it doesn’t even have a scratch on it.  Dislikes: The only slight problem with this phone is that the touch screen is for some reason deactivated when you slide out the keypad. Every person I showed it to tried to use the touch screen to navigate from around the menu, including me the first time. I guess once you know though you soon forget about it, but still think its a bit odd. The only other problem was when I first had the phone the software was very buggy, however after a week I updated it and now it’s been behaving nicely. Overall: A great phone if you want to get a touch screen / number keypad smart cellphone. The camera works well (see pics above) and as an entertainment unlimited phone I can honestly say its lives up to its name. More apps are constantly being released and the phone comes pre-loaded with facebook, Google maps and a nice selection of games. For full stats see below: Aino Touch Phone Specs

• 3 inch widescreen 16:9 touch screen and slide out Keypad
• 8.1 megapixel camera with Photo flash and intuitive touch focus, Video VGA 25fps
• Bluetooth™ stereo A2DP portable headphones included with docking base for phone/headphones
• 55MB Phone memory and 8GB MicroSD memory card included
• Remote Play for PLAYSTATION®3, Exchange ActiveSync®
• A-GPS with Google Maps™
• 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi, (Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and tri-band HSDPA)
• Talk Time: 13 hours, Standby time: 380 hours
• Dimensions: 104 x 50 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 134.0g
• PlayNow™ arena and Track id, Built in Step Counter and GPS tracker
• DLNA Certified™ (connect wirelessly to other electronic devices via Wi-Fi. i.e: See your photos on your TV)
• Media Go: Transfer your files from PC to phone wirelessly & automatically when docked (using Wi-Fi)

Sony Ericsson’s global Hopper Invasion campaign is well underway and thought it about time to give you an update on it (I first wrote about it here). The campaign promotes their new Entertainment Unlimited range of phones, namely the Satio, Aino and Yari. It all started a few months ago with a teaser site allowing people to create their own personalised online hoppers and a promo video showing 500 hoppers being let loose in Barcelona. They then did an online flash mob by taking over the yahoo.co.uk site for an afternoon using the personalised hoppers created by users online. (click here to see that) Next they created a fun interactive concept using twitter (with a unique hashtag), a warehouse full of deflated hoppers hooked up to pumps, and a dedicated website showing live video feeds from the warehouse. The general idea is that each time anyone on twitter types #pumpt the tweet is picked up at the warehouse and a hopper is given a burst of air in real time, all visible on the hopper website. The warehouse will stop pumping up hoppers on the 6th December and in the meantime Sony Ericsson are asking participants to tweet ideas for what to do with them. They will then pick the best one and make it happen. So far its becoming a great success, over 240,000 online hoppers have been created, and after just 7 days over 400 hoppers in the warehouse have been pumped up, and the #pumpt hash tag has been a trending topic on twitter. To follow the Hopper campaign on twitter click here, or to see the hopper live feed click here. (They also have nice Facebook and Picasa profiles set up)

Last week I was kindly invited to a Nokia roundtable event called “The way we live next 3.0”. The event was held at the new One & Only hotel in Cape Town and Nokia invited Missing Linking entrepreneur and legend Richard Mulholland to be the guest speaker. He shared his vision on the latest trends in the mobile space and where he sees these trends going in the future. The short of it was that mobile phones/devices will eventually replace computers and that for companies and leaders to be successful they will have to heed Alvin Toffler’s wise words: “The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” The other speaker was Nokia’s product marketing manager Patrick Henchie who talked about Nokia’s vision of what the future (see video above) and how mobility might evolve. Nokia also introduced us to some future products and let us have a play;

• N900: This is the first Nokia phone to run on the open source OS Maemo. Its basically a 3.5” touch screen phone with slide out keyboard. My brief impression was its a step in the right direction but still not an iPhone (and a bit fat). For the specs PDF click here.
• X6 touch phone: I didn’t get to play with this for too long but it was my favourite product on show. Its a 3.5” capacitive touch screen phone. It runs Nokia’s symbian OS and it just worked great. Also when you get the phone you get access to unlimited free music downloads from the Nokia Ovi Store (For the phone only but still is a great bonus and the phone has 32GB internal memory).
• Nokia Booklet 3G: This new Nokia laptop is pretty exiting, its made from a single piece of machined aluminium and feels great. It has shortcuts to the Ovi store and maps built in, as well as an integrated 3G HSPA modem. The machine runs Windows 7, has a 10.1” screen and has an incredible battery life of up to 12 hours. After a little play I thought it was very sluggish, but then I turned off the power saving mode and it worked fine. Great bit of kit if you travel lots and want to use it to access cloud services and do some light work on the go. For the specs PDF click here.

Overall the event was a great initiative and I liked the way they made the sessions intimate with only about 15 influential journalists, developers and bloggers invited, it gave us the chance to interact very easily with the speakers and products. On another note thanks to Olga from Nokia South Africa for inviting me even though she knew I’m a Sony Ericsson fan !   

Recently there has been a lot of rumours floating around for Sony Ericsson’s first Android based touch phone, code named Rachael (or possibly X3 or even X10?). Yesterday this teaser site was released and seems to relate to project Rachael in its source code. Details are thin but I have added some pics below of spy shots of the phone and some as yet unconfirmed specs. I want one. Sony Ericsson Rachael Specs:

• 16 GB internal memory
• Wi-Fi, and 7.2Mbps HSDPA 3G data, Bluetooth 2.0
• A-GPS
• GSM Quad-band
• 8MP autofocus camera
• 3.5mm Headphone socket
• Mini USB jack (for charging and media)
• Micro SD / Micro SDHC Memory Slot
• Android 2.0 SE customised touch Operating System
• Li-Polymer Battery
• Processor: Snapdragon 1 GHz Processor with dedicated 3D graphics
• 4″ capacitive WVGA touch screen