Safaricom Sells More Than 0.6 Million Neon Smartphones

Safaricom (NSE) has today announced that it has sold more than 600,000 Neon smartphones in 2019, making the devices the most popular and affordable smartphone in its retail shops across the country. The explosion in the Neon’s popularity comes after Safaricom revamped its lineup in April 2019 to introduce the most affordable 4G smartphone in the country at KES 3,999.

“We introduced the Neon Smartphone range to cater to customers seeking quality and reliable smartphones at an affordable price. The devices are especially designed to appeal to first-time smartphone users and have been received quite well, emerging as our most preferred smartphone range,”said Michael Joseph, CEO, Safaricom.

Neon smartphones are precisely tailored to offer an optimum combination of screen-size, battery capacity, device storage, camera, and phone memory at low prices. In addition, the devices are similarly engineered to deliver superior connectivity offering fast data speeds off Safaricom’s countrywide 4G network.

In recent months, Safaricom has partnered with Google™ to deliver an optimized variety of Android™ known as Android™ (Go edition) on the Neon devices. Android (Go edition) helps Neon smartphone users control their data usage by managing which apps can use data through the “Data Saver” feature and compressing data through the Chrome™ browser.

Google’s advanced compression algorithm  uses 40 percent less data to displat search results. This configuration of the Android OS is optimized for entry level devices and comes with a tailored suite of popular Google apps.

The Neon range of Smartphones are available under Safaricom’s Maisha Ni Digital campaign through the firm’s more than 50 shops across the country, Safaricom dealers, and online at Masoko.com.

Besides being the most affordable 4G devices in the country, the Neon range are also the most affordable VoLTE capable devices in Kenya.

Launched in June 2019, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology enhances call quality empowering Safaricom 4G customers to make crystal-clear voice calls, even when in noisy environments such as markets. The technology further enables a customers to make video calls with other capable VoLTE devices at no extra cost. Safaricom 4G customers can enable VoLTE on their devices by dialling *100*12# or *200*10#.