Despite all fun that came with the various panel discussions on the Vifaa Tech Festival, there is no doubt that the awards section was bound to bring in some exciting competition. And straight from the voting statistics, it was clear that the nominated brands and products had proven a lot in the country.

After a little over a week of voting, the following are the brands that were lucky enough to take home the awards:

Best Entry-Level Smartphone

This category that involved smartphones that cost lower than KES 10,000 was certainly competitive with Safaricom Neon Ray, Infinix Smart HD, Tecno Pop 5 and Nokia C1 Plus competing for the vote. Infinix ultimately took it home and from the experience that the firm has in this price range, it is easy to see why.

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Winner: Infinix Smart HD

Best Budget Smartphone

This category saw devices that cost less than KES 25,000 battle it out for the crown including Huawei Y8S, realme 7i, OPPO A54 and Tecno Camon 17. Like the entry-level devices, these four have so many common features but realme 7i stood out knowing how aggressive the brand has been since its launch in the Kenyan market.

Winner: realme 7i

Best Battery Life on a Phone

This was definitely a fight between budget smartphones that are known to preserve battery life impressively well as their displays don’t demand that much power. Well, among Infinix Hot Play 9, Samsung Galaxy A32, Vivo Y12 and OPPO A54, the second device seemed to have impressed Kenyans the most.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy A32

Best Mid-range Smartphone

The mid-range smartphone category had Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, Samsung Galaxy A72, OPPO Reno 5 and Vivo V20. With Samsung’s dominance in the awards, it was almost certain that the Galaxy A72 would win and it did.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy A72

Best Flagship Smartphone

You might very well call this the battle of the beasts the four premium smartphones looked to be named as the best. As expected, the list included iPhone 12, Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, Huawei Mate 40 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 11. The S21 Ultra went on to fly on top of the list taking a majority of the votes.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Best DSLR Camera

This one was quite tricky knowing how admired all the four models are by professional content creators across the world. Between Sony Alpha 7c, Nikon Z50, Canon R6 and Panasonic Lumix DC-S1, the third managed to take it away. This can mostly be seen as a result of availability as Canon is probably the most established camera brand of the four in Kenya.

Winner: Canon R6

People’s Choice Electronic Store

Kenyans can be choosy when it comes to their electronics store of choice and rightly so based on the products and level of service offered. Well, Hotpoint turned out as the fan-favourite against some renowned stores like Carrefour, Anisuma Traders and iSalute.

Winner: Hotpoint

Best Mobile Data Package

A competition between Telkom’s Pawa bundles, Airtel’s Amazing data bundles and Safaricom’s Tunukiwa bundles saw the latter crowned as the best.

Winner: Safaricom Tunukiwa Bundles

App of The Year

This category saw an array of app battle it out. This included delivery app Glovo, online store app Jumia, telco service app MySafaricom and ride-hailing app Little. Being one of the most used apps on a countrywide basis MySafaricom undoubtedly won it. This could also be attributed to the new version of the app that has received positive reviews since its launch.

Winner: MySafaricom

Most Reliable Home Internet Service

Home internet has been a solid phenomenon for the past year or so as its usage has spiked with Kenyans working and learning from home. So, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see Safaricom Home beat stand tallest as it had seen the biggest rise in the number of users since last year. This was against other services like Poa! Internet, JTL’s Faiba and its biggest rival Wananchi Group’s Zuku.

Winner: Safaricom Home

Best TV in Kenya

With some really cool TVs like LG Nanocell, Hisense Frameless Android TV and Sony X8000 Series, it certainly was surprising to see Samsung Q60 Series take on the storm and stand as the winner.

Winner: Samsung Q60 Series 

Coolest Home Appliance

This category was certainly interesting as voters had to choose a home appliance that they would consider as one with the best features and probably most effective. This includes the premium LG InstaView refrigerators, Nutricook rapid egg cooker and Eufy robotic vacuum cleaner. The trio definitely can get into the “cool” bracket but LG’s InstaView fridge was voted as the best and rightly so.

Winner: LG InstaView Refrigerators

 Best Budget Laptop

When it comes to affordable laptops, there surely is stiff competition as various brands tend to build devices with similar specs. But there is that one that tends to stand out and the Dell Vostro did against Asus X509JA, Lenovo Ideapad S145 and HP Notebook 15.

Winner: Dell Vostro

Best Laptop Brand in East Africa

This was an award for the brand with the biggest portfolio and influence in the East African market. And a list with HP, Dell, Asus and Lenovo clearly proves years of presence with tonnes of products shipped in the region. HP the took proved to be the best of the rest taking up a huge chunk of the votes.

Winner: HP

All we can say is congratulations to all the winners!!!