The Services at a glance

• Vodafone People – Social Network integration, auto sync, the most innovative address book out there.
• My Web – Think customisable Vodafone live with a few extra bells and whistle
• App Store – Mainly web browser based apps that enable them to work on any OS, great news for developers but it remains to be seen what sort of apps will be on offer.
• Music – A couple of different offerings from DRM free downloads to subscription based services. 
• Navigation – Think Satnav merged with Facebook. The ablitity to see where people are which brings its own benefits.

The services link into each other very well and more functionality will no doubt be added as time goes by.

Further insights into the individual services will follow in the next few days.

The handsets

Vodafone announced that there will be two dedicated handsets with far more to follow also pointing out that the new services are compatible on a large number of handsets.

The SamsungH1 is the higher spec’ed of the two phones with the M1 being aimed towards the lower price points with a reduced feature list.

Samsung M1

•  3.2″ TFT touch screen 400×200 resolution
• 3 mega pixel camera with auto focus
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• 1gb memory with memory card slot

A solid spec list for the lesser of the two handsets. Pricing this handset right will be very important as it will be in direct competition with the HTCMagic and other Samsung handsets that are all proving very popular.

Sansung H1

• 3.5″ AMOLED Touch Screen 800×400 resolution
• 5 mega pixel camera with auto focus, flash and 8 x digital zoom
• A-GPS, wifi, bluetooth
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• 16gb memory with memory card slot

For a handset that is being marketed at the high end the Vodafone 360 Samsung H1 device doesnt really excite even though Vodafone has been working with Samsung for the last year or so. Given that the Sony Ericsson Satio has a 12.1 mega pixel camera, the NokiaN97 has 32gb on board this H1 device struggles to turn me on but the hardware isnt supposed to. Think about the Iphone, its not the hardware that excites its the usability and the fact it works that presses peoples buttons.

These two phones have been built with the Vodafone 360 services in mind. Having seen demo’s of the phones in action Vodafone and Samsung seem to have nailed the usability with dedicated buttons for key features that give quick access to the things that matter.

The services look great but it remains to be seen whether my three concerns will remain:

1. The benefit of Vodafone 360, especially Vodafone People relies on you and your friends using it. There’s no point you having all the capabilities in the world to connect with your friends when they dont use the services and therefore cant connect back.
2. Vodafone 360 provides a suite of services that give the user all they need which is great but it seems a bit ‘all or nothing’ with users activities being boxed in and contained to Vodafone’s chosen services etc. Yes Apple do this to some extent but Apple services were up and running way before the iphone came along.
3. Seeing Vodafone People in action, I fear that the navigation albeit innovative, will confuse comes across cluttered. If I want to ring someone I can do it in one or two taps on my HTC magic, it remains to be seen whether the funky interface allows the same.

Vodafone Live was ground breaking and put Vodafone well out in front. Vodafone 360 looks very good but has alot of competition and it remains to be seen whether people will hand in their HTC Magic, Iphone or Blackberrys in order to trade up to the Samsung H1. Vodafone has been clever in that the services will not only work on the Samsung devices but many current handsets so customers will not need to change. Useful given that many people are on 24 month contracts with the Iphone 3Gs. Secondly you dont even need to be a Vodafone customer to use it. Genius but its complicated to work out how Vodafone will get revenue from O2 customers for example. Oh and will Apple, Google and Blackberry allow the app in their stores.

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