Afrihost Mobile smartphone on the way?

Afrihost appears to be gearing up to launch a smartphone called the Zest T1, along with a mobile data package.

The signs of the imminent announcement from Afrihost come from a recent MyBroadband article and a survey competition that Afrihost boss Gian Visser advertised from his Twitter account.

MyBroadband recently asked a number of CEOs working in South Africa’s information and communications technology sector what their first and current cellphone was.

Visser said that his first phone was a Nokia 6110 and that he is currently using the Zest T1.

A quick search for the Zest T1 reveals the website of Zest Mobile, which prominently features the smartphone.

According to the site, the Zest T1 is a dual-SIM device that has the following specifications:

As the table above shows, a number of technical details of the device are unknown as yet, including its chipset, dimensions, weight, battery life, and front camera specs.

It is also not clear which resolution “QHD” refers to as it could mean Quad High Definition, which is 1440×2550 pixels, or quarter High Definition (usually stylised “qHD”), which is 560×920 pixels.

Questions about the specifications, price, and whether the device is manufactured locally were acknowledged, but not answered.

Price survey

Afrihost and Zest T1 survey tweet by Gian Visser

The final pricing for the device and the data package it comes with may yet be undetermined, as Visser recently posted a link to a survey involving the Zest T1 and Afrihost.

As an incentive to participate in the survey, Visser said they would be giving away one Zest T1 with 120GB (10GB x 12 months) as a prize.

The survey asks five questions, with one asking what you would be willing to pay for a Zest T1 that comes bundled with 1GB of mobile data per month for 12 months.

It would therefore seem as though Afrihost is looking at launching a data package with the phone similar to the once-off pre-paid bundles sold by Cell C where data is allocated every month for a certain number of months (in this case, 12 months).

Update: comment from Afrihost

After this article was published, Gian Visser provided the following feedback:

We are going to be involved in their official launch. We love the phone, the incredible value it offers and the fact that is birthed in South Africa. Also the fact that it has dual SIM capabilities means that it will be very easy for our clients to use their normal SIM card for phone calls and make use of Afrihost Mobile on their other SIM.

We are currently putting the phone through its paces and doing some market research around how best to launch the phone to Afrihost clients so that they get great value out of the deal.

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