Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 review

Also, it may be that our friends don't update their Facebook status often enough, but we didn't always find it helpful to have such information put front and centre every time we looked at the phone.

Apptitude
The H1 handles applications differently from other phones too, merging apps with menu options in one big grid of icons, which you can see by pressing the button on the far right of the phone's front. We like this feature, since it means that you don't have to go trawling through menus to get to the camera or music player, for example. We also like how some apps have expanding icons, so you can see live news feeds and Twitter updates without opening the relevant app, for example.

You'll have to stay organised, though, since everything's in one place. It doesn't help that you can only delete apps that you've installed yourself. Vodafone has included a fairly random bunch of apps that we could quite happily live without, including games and an app that keeps you updated on the antics of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes F1 team.

If you do want to grab some apps of your own choice, you can use the Vodafone 360 game and app shop, either on the phone or the Web. There's a decent collection of apps there, but we don't like the fact that it's difficult to tell whether apps are free or paid-for until you've selected the detailed description. For us, this information is a deal-breaker when selecting apps, so the sooner we have it, the better.

LiMoFo
The H1 is the first phone we've tested that uses the LiMo (Linux Mobile) operating system, but it's been so heavily customised to accommodate Vodafone 360 that we bet you won't notice it at all. Still, it's an interesting factoid if you're into mobile-phone operating systems. But maybe that's just us.

The 5-megapixel camera takes decent photos, aided by the LED photo light

The phone doesn't struggle to get tasks done, but we occasionally found it paused to have a little think if we started tapping too quickly. In a couple of instances, this sluggishness can be annoying. The on-screen keyboard isn't responsive enough for our fastest typing speed, for example, although, at slower speeds, it proved accurate, with good predictive-text capability. The applications screen also suffered as a result of the sluggishness. We found we sometimes accidentally opened apps while trying to scroll from right to left. The situation isn't unbearable, but we found we needed to proceed slowly and deliberately to get things done.

Feature creature
The social-networking features take pride of place, but there's much more to the H1. It's got a bright, beautiful, 89mm (3.5-inch) touchscreen, 16GB of built-in memory and every wireless connection under the sun -- Wi-Fi, HSDPA for faster downloads over 3G, and Bluetooth.

There's a 5-megapixel camera with an LED photo light too, and it did a decent job in our tests. Although photos weren't as sharp as they could have been, colours were natural and the LED light did a good job of illuminating dark shots. We'd be happy to whip out the H1 to capture some candid photos or a passing celebrity.

We also like the H1's good old-fashioned call quality. In our tests, calls were clear and loud, and the phone proved comfortable to use.

Conclusion
We like how the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 shows contacts in a new way -- not to mention its vivid screen and good connectivity -- but this phone puts you on a steep learning curve. If your friends and contacts are key to your existence, it may be worth investing the time to get to know the H1, especially if they're using Vodafone 360 too. Otherwise, you may want to spend your time getting to know more friends, rather than trying to understand this handset.

Edited by Charles Kloet