It's iPhone Day at Vodafone: Big Red launches 2 new iPhone apps

All across the country, numerous Vodafone customers have woken to a special delivery. Inside the packaging is their shiny new official Vodafone iPhone.

Congratulations all!

It’s ok. Don’t worry. That Vodafone 360 nightmare that we’ve all been suffering under for the past few months is finally over.

No…wait…

What’s this! A news release from Vodafone, you say? Vodafone THREE sixy?

Batten down the hatches!

Put the old, the infirm and the youngsters in the panic room!

Lock up your daughters!

To coincide with the death of 360launch of the iPhone, Vodafone is launching two corresponding free iPhone applications on the Apple App Store. Similar to how Orange launched a few really smart apps (the Orange Wednesdays cinema app is simply fantastic), Vodafone is launching it’s own branded ones.

They are:

– The Vodafone 360 People Sync App – to help customers easily move mobile contacts from one phone to iPhone
– Vodafone Navigation App – providing turn-by-turn navigation, voice instructions and speed camera alerts

Unfortunately Vodafone seem absolutely resolute on mentioning 360 all over the place when all it does is simply remind us what an utter failure the original launch was. You and I both know that if Vodafone could — if Apple would have allowed them — they’d have switched off the App Store capability on the iPhone and replaced it with their own shitter, half-baked piece of bollocks. They’ve have also disabled the send-a-photo-by-email functionality inherent on the device and forced you to upload the photos to 360.com. And then maybe allow you to send to Facebook. But nothing else. Because nobody uses any other photo sharing services.

As it happens, the applications announced today are fairly innocuous. The 360 People Sync app is a fairly useful addition to help you move your contacts from your old, operator-controlled handset to your new operator-is-the-bit-pipe Apple iPhone.

Vodafone’s Navigation App has a lot of fans on other platforms — and rightly so. Thus it’s a good addition to the iPhone platform for anyone hunting for it. It’ll cost you a fairly reasonable £5/month (for 30-days) or £3/month if you choose to keep the functionality for the length of your contract. But right now you can sample it for free until the end of April. The app itself is free to download.

Do also check out the rather nifty Vodafone Update iPhone app (iTunes link) which allows you to find out what’s happening on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. It’s a Vodafone Germany offering but instructions appear in English.

Pick up the Vodafone Navigation app from this iTunes link.

And get hold of the 360 People Sync app from this iTunes link.

So finally we’re there. Vodafone UK has finally achieved it’s dream (well, the dream of some of their executives) and launched the fabled iPhone.

Next we’re looking at T-Mobile. But then, they couldn’t launch their way out of a paper bag. You only have to try and contend with their online billing system to recognise that it’s been designed by people who — like the executives in charge of 360 — enjoy going home at 4.30pm and not bothering to actually deliver a proper, rounded service. And whilst T-Mobile sits staring at the wall waiting for the Orange merger to go through, it would probably be better to assume no innovation whatsoever from them over the next 12 months.

Which leaves us with Hutchison’s 3UK — I go hot and cold on them. One moment their marketing message is inclusive to the folk who routinely spend £100 a month without thinking. The next moment they’re chasing after the Sharons, Staceys and Bronwens who spend £0.03 per month on their mobile bills. I do like their almost-iPhone offer — the iPod Touch & MiFi Unit offer (£23/month on contract). Will we see the iPhone eventually lurch on to the 3 network? At some point.

Meanwhile if you’ve just upgraded to the Vodafone iPhone — I know a lot of people who are — congratulations!