Across Africa with two smartphones

As a software architect and technologist I am actively involved in interrogating and analysing software products that cross my desk on a daily basis. It's part of who I am. Download, play, crit, throw away or publicly announce the brilliant product that some propeller-head has created in his garage in a small town off the map. Doing this daily, I am still amazed at just how much power a smartphone can deliver with the right software.

We all know that the latest smartphones are exceptionally good at managing your complex daily life, allowing you to check your e-mails, connect to Facebook or Twitter, schedule your meetings, listen to music and watch movies. But what about filming an entire adventure on smartphones, in high-definition (HD), on motorcycles?

Well, that's exactly what we did. My friend Wynand Louw and I headed off on two motorcycles from Cape Town on 23 October last year and travelled 6 085km in 14 days. Our journey took us through Gaborone, Francistown, Nata and Kasane in Botswana, on to Livingstone in Zambia, through the Caprivi strip in Namibia, back to Maun in Botswana, through Gobabis and Windhoek in Namibia and eventually returning to Cape Town.

There were three pieces of technology that we could not do without on this trip: my faithful Garmin Zumo 550 GPS navigation system, my iPhone4 and Wynand's Samsung Galaxy S2.

Continue reading the full story on www.TechCentral.co.za.