Reviews

Vodafone 360 H1 review: first look

Vodafone's new social network-focused service and handset is available at the end of the week. We got a brief hands on with the H1 to see what value it offers to business users as well as its target audience of consumers.

28 Oct 2009

At launch the H1 will support the usual suspects in terms of web-based email. At present, Outlook isn't supported but Vodafone hasn't ruled out adding this at a later date should user feedback and demand dictates its need.

Indeed, that appears to be the ethos behind Vodafone 360. It's clear this is quite a customer centric offering and the operator has laboured to squeeze in as much feedback from users as possible. And it plans to do more of that going forward to evolve the product.

The ability to add a remote wipe or lock facility on the web-based platform would be handy, for example, should a user find they've either mislaid their handset or had it nicked. While not there from launch, again Vodafone hasn't ruled out such additions.

During our briefing this afternoon, for example, Vodafone was keen to stress that there might still be a few bugs evident in the software as it's still tweaking things between now and Friday. If what we saw was buggy, we're mightily impressed in an anticipatory way of just how good the final build will be. We'll let you know on that one in the full review.

Verdict

From what we've seen so far, this handset and accompanying web-based service has a lot of promise. While it's targeted first and foremost at the communication-hungry consumer, it is likely to find many friends within the business community as more and more users turn to the likes of Twitter et al to help network and collaborate with colleagues.