"Where the hell is that Whatley guy?"

The short answer? Namibia (and more).

The longer answer is tad more complicated…

Some of the more observant Really Mobile followers out there may have noticed of late that Sir Ben of Smith has been running around keeping the lights on for all and sundry. While he has delivered some spectacular posts, it’s about time we pulled our socks up and got our hands dirty again.

Oh Hai!

Vikki laid the smack down yesterday with her ode to the Eseries (while giving the E75 a firm ‘thanks, but no thanks’ along the way), but now it’s time for yours truly to step up and take his true mantle today, on this day, Whatley Wednesday.

So, where have I been?

If you read my personal blog or if you heard the recent All About Symbian podcast, you might know that this Summer is going to get very busy indeed for the chap tapping the keys right now.

Very, very busy indeed.

Basically, I’m off around the world to cover the ‘Lucozade Energy Challenges‘ from a social media perspective. This means that I’ll be uploading photos, videos and blog posts for the next few months while at the same time tweeting my little heart out from the most remote of destinations.

I am taking a huge sack of equipment with me, a few things I’m going to list for you now…

First of all, what phone?

Given the nature of the project, the choice was simple: the Nokia N86

Yes I know that I’ve been fighting with Ben about how good the N97 is, but really, when it comes to creating content (video and/or photos) – the N86′s 8MP camera leaves the rest standing. A fantastic piece of kit that – so far – has managed to survive the heat of the Namibian desert as well as the danger-filled madness known as ‘the inside of my rucksack’.

Very, very impressed indeed. So that’s the handset sorted, but what about network? Well, the answer is two-fold.

In the areas that I actually had signal I switched between ‘NAM Cell One’ and ‘MTC Namibia’, neither of which allowed me to dial out using the Voda PAYG SIM that I was armed with. The former allowed me to use their data, and the latter I could at least send text messages, vice versa was not possible.

The second part of the ‘staying connected’ aspect of the trip came down to this bad boy -

The TT Explorer 500 BGAN Terminal Satphone.

Quick! The Satphone!

According to the website:

Page 1 of 2 | Next page