Vodafone 360 H1 in Smartphones

It’s not every day a new phone, operating system and a completely different way of using your mobile phone come along all at once. But that’s precisely what has happened with Vodafone’s latest smartphone – the Samung-manufactured 360 H1.

The hardware is new; the LiMo (Linux Mobile) operating system is new; and the social networking aggregation and mobile backup service it's tied to, Vodafone 360, is new too. It must have been quite some feat of organisation getting all of these things working and ready for launch together, and we tip our hats to Vodafone for doing so.

And we like the idea behind the 360 H1: once you’ve signed up to the Vodafone 360 service – either on the phone itself or via the website – you add your email and social networking account credentials, and all of the related contact information, status updates, messages and chat communications are aggregated by Vodafone's 360 servers and piped to the phone. There's an extensive list of supported services – with Facebook, Windows Live, Yahoo, Google and Twitter coming soon, in addition to Vodafone 360 itself – and you can also add POP3 and IMAP email accounts.

Once the synchronisation process has been completed you can view all your contacts in a flat list, or in a funky 3D view by simply clicking the contacts button below the screen, and these come complete with status updates when available. Vodafone 360 also offers a handy backup facility that stores all your settings, SMS messages and so on, which means you can restore everything easily in the event your phone is lost or stolen.

Inevitably, there are some rough edges. While Facebook contacts were loaded instantly, complete with status updates and all related contact details, the system only synchronises Google chat and Windows Live messenger contacts – full Gmail contact synchronisation is "coming soon" but there's no firm date. It's a bizarre omission we overcame by exporting from Gmail to a CSV file, then importing via the phone's PC Studio software.