Vodafone 360 H1 review

Email synchronisation is flaky too. Despite repeated assurances from Vodafone's technical team, we failed to get the phone to synchronise messages at all. And although there's the facility to add open source-developed apps via the phone's Shop utility, there's currently nothing useful to download.

And the LiMo OS is both old-fashioned and generally more fiddly to use than its Android and iPhone rivals. The onscreen Qwerty keyboard in particular could do with some work – its keys are harder to tap accurately than the iPhone's, it's autocorrection and word suggestion doesn't work that well and it often doesn't offer itself in landscape mode when it's most needed.

The hardware – built by Samsung – seems more than up to the job. We loved the 5-megapixel camera, which is among the best we've used on any phone, smart or otherwise. It enabled us to take crisp, contrasty pictures, and it's packed with features, boasting autofocus, an LED flash, digital image stabilisation, plus face and smile detection. Not only that, but the phone also shoots 720p 20fps video, and results are very impressive indeed.

Web browsing is well-implemented too. The 360 H1 boasts the latest version of Opera Mobile – 9.6 – which renders pages accurately, while panning and zooming feels smooth and responsive.

Meanwhile, an excellent touchscreen contributes significantly to the quality feel. It's a sensitive capacitive unit, boasting haptic feedback, a bright and colourful 3.5in OLED screen and a high resolution of 800 x 480. And there's little missing elsewhere, with HSDPA data downloads, GPS, a whopping 16GB of storage built in, an FM tuner and 3.5mm headphone socket for attaching your own headphones.

And battery life seems good: under average to heavy use the phone lasted two days before we needed to reach for the charger. Alas, due to its failure to work with email we were unable to run our standard tests, which would have given us a better idea how it compared with the likes of the iPhone and the HTC Hero.

Despite all the positives, however, there's no escaping the fact that this phone lags far behind the competition. Android and the iPhone OS are both more mature, offer greater scope for expansion and have had most of their kinks and problems ironed out. Even if all the glitches were to magically disappear, it would take a massive effort on the part of Vodafone's community of developers to bring the range of apps up to scratch, and the cheapest price of £35 per month on a two year contract simply rubs salt in the wound.

Author: Jonathan Bray