
What’s Vodafone 360 I hear you ask… Well, it’s a new, revolutionary set of services from Vodafone, which claims to gather up all of your friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites into one single place. From the intial press release, it looks like Vodafone is attempting to achieve across a broad range of phones what companies like INQ and LG have attempted with single phone models…
So what does the service comprise, what phones does it work on? Read on…
Firstly, the service is designed to be embedded within the phone, and Vodafone are using the LiMo operating system to help achieve this. At launch, there is 1 phone, developed by Samsung, which will be labelled as the Vodafone 360 H1, which will support the capabilities natively on the device. A second device is due from Samsung soon, which will offer customers a range of “colours” and models.
Also, at launch, the service will be pre-loaded on 4 Symbian handsets in Vodafone’s current phone catalogue, and the full service will be available for download on another 10 Symbian devices. However, “part or all of the service” will also be available for download onto “over 100 popular phones”. No word as to whether this is still limited to Symbian phones, or whether it is using Java / mobile web browser technology to allow them to support wider than just Symbian; however, Vodafone have stated they plan to support more handsets (from multiple manufacturers) and operating systems over the coming months.
So, the service itself:
- The main key element is Vodafone People (and this function will be available across all 100 phone models) automtically syncs all contacts from your phone, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, and Google Talk. Soon, that list will be enhanced with Twitter, Hyves and studiVZ (the last two are leading Dutch and German social networks).
- This address book should also sync with your PC and Mac, although it’s not clear if these platforms will sync with the same internet server, or whether that will be direct to the device (the latter is hinted at).
- The internet services is said to include “apps, games, music and mapping services”.
Vodafone have stated that “Customers will have integrated contacts, music, photos, and mapping services and can share their favourite music choices and even their physical location, how and when they choose, with their chosen group of friends”.
If all of this is not enough, Vodafone are opening up the website that manages all of this to non-Vodafone users too, to allow the system to be used by all, although you’ll need to be a Vodafone customer to benefit from the mobile side of things.
A little more on the Vodafone 360 H1 (as pictured above); all we know right now is that it has “a 3.5 inch multitouch, high definition OLED screen, 16GB memory, WiFi, a maximum talk time of over 400 minutes (3G) and a 5 megapixel camera.” It also has integrated GPS, as will the Vodafone 360 M1 to follow, although that has a smaller 3.2 inch TFT screen, 1GB memory, no Wi-Fi, and only a 3 megapixel camera.
However, Andrew Grill from London Calling, has provided info on some of the apps involved, including a Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes application providing news and live telemetry from their F1 cars, and Tube Exits (a popular iPhone app which gives you advice on where to board London Underground trains for the most efficient exit).

More information is now available at www.vodafone360.com. Screenshot courtesy of Andrew Grill.
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