Making the internet more personal and people-centric seems to embolden both mobile phone makers and their carriers to reinvent the wheel, as it were. There’s really nothing new here except that what seems like exclusive deals are increasingly turning to have some level of synergistic relationship between mobile phone brands and mobile network providers.
Take the case of the Vodafone 360 service recently launched in the UK and other European cities and comes with the handsets exclusive to the network. We’re talking about the H1 and M1 smartphones you can only get from Vodafone.
A Social Smartphone
Except a strikingly handsome design on a bright red body, the Vodafone 360 M1 looks and feels like it’s more expensive H1 brother. It does have a smaller 3.2 inch OLED TFT touchscreen display but both share the same wide VGA and 16 millions color depth. A 3 megapixel autofocus camera is a reasonable step-down from the 5 megapixel camera of its H1 Twin. Likewise, you get 1GB internal memory whereas the H1 has 16BM but both can be expanded with their microSD slot. WiFi is not supported in the M1 but you get Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP.
Other than these, the two are basically the same. They are your quad band GSM and twin-band 3G/UMTS with broadband HSDPA/HSUPA data connectivity that complements the Vodafone 360 service and make it a remarkable social networking handset. Right after tuning it on, you get a one-touch access to all your VOIP, IM and social networking sights fully integrated with your phone contact. Vodafone also has about 1,000 apps you can download.
Getting into the Vodafone World
With over 300 million subscribers worldwide, Vodafone is pitching its 360 service to put all of them in a social networking hub, allowing multimedia file sharing across the network. Starting with 8 European countries, you can now preorder the Vodafone 360 M1 and H1 from its website free of charge with a 24-month contract. While the H1 has a starting monthly of 35, you can be sure that the modestly specified M1 will get a lower monthly. If only for these wonderful handsets, it may a good time to set into the Vodafone world.
