Vodafone 360 H1 Review
In brief
The Vodafone 360 H1 is a smartphone designed for people who love social networking on their mobile phone.
Look and Feel
With a 3.5 inch touchscreen, the Vodafone 360 H1 is well equipped to support a wide range of features and a LiMo platform. The LiMo operating system has a 3D user interface, although you can choose between the 3D mode and the traditional method of listing information. The 3D mode is unique and we found it enjoyable but it may not appeal to everyone so it’s good the phone has the option to change this.
The brushed steel cover of the Vodafone 360 H1 looks good and is enhanced by having just three buttons on the front. Also available with a black casing, these buttons give direct access to your actions (calls, texts, emails), contacts, and applications. You use the touchscreen to navigate from these screens, including answering and ending calls. The screen is responsive and the on-screen keyboard is supportive for typing thanks to its
iPhone-style larger keys which pop up with each press to confirm the letter you tapped.
You can customise the different screens. With the contacts screen, you can give each contact a different colour to keep track of people more easily – for example, you may want to distinguish between family, friends and work colleagues. The Vodafone 360 H1 notices which contacts you interact with most and will show you these profiles first – a great time-saving feature of the phone. You can also type in a person’s name and all the information about them will be brought up, including contact details, messages and internet accounts linked with them, so you can communicate directly.
The layout of the applications icons will be familiar with anyone who knows the iPhone, as the icons cover several screens. The only slightly annoying thing is on the first screen, the apps on the right side hang over onto the next screen – perhaps to make sure you realise you can scroll to the right for more icons. A nice feature, though, is that the icons expand when you tap them. This allows you to view the contents of each app without having to open it fully. You can also rearrange the different icons so your favourites are on the first screen, and download more from the phone’s Shop.
Special features
The Vodafone 360 H1 consists of the Samsung H1 mobile with the Vodafone 360 networking service installed. This service lets you sync all your social networking sites into the one place and when you first turn the phone on, you will be asked to sign up to Vodafone 360. This is well worth doing and the process is simple. Once registered, you can chat to friends on various sites including Windows Mail, Facebook and Google Mail. If your friends are with Vodafone 360, you can also contact them through this channel.
The Vodafone 360 also features a back up service so you will never lose your contact details, messages, emails, photos or music tracks.
Each friend has a 360-degree profile and the photos are displayed in 3D. Tapping on the photo brings up that person’s last update and tapping again opens the full profile and all the different communication options available.
The Vodafone 360 H1 has many features to help keep your busy social life on track and the user-friendly interface and screen size makes doing so, enjoyable.