Those looking to purchase the hottest phone on the market should be aware that not every deal and every contract are created equal. Thankfully there are some great deals being offered by many European cellular service providers.

One such deal is being offered by Vodafone through Phones4U. This deal requires a £25 a month plan with £39 due up front. For that price, you will get 100 calling minutes, 500 text messages and 500MB of mobile data allowance. Granted, this might not be the best phone for those who are heavy on the texting and calling end, but the data allowance is comparable and is even a plus considering it’s offered through Vodafone.

Better yet the phone is unlocked so it will be first in line for any Android updates that are pushed out by Samsung, something locked devices are not able to boast.

That’s not the only deal out there for the Samsung Galaxy S II, though. Why not check out the Samsung Galaxy S II contracts over at Best Mobile Contracts, where you can compare this deal with many others to find the best deal for you.

If you do not really mind having to order anything online, then you might have already ordered, shipped and gotten a Google Nexus One smart phone.

On the other hand, most people are not too keen on getting the alleged iPhone killer (well, it failed to live up to the hype so it isn’t) are already planning to put their money aside for the launch of the HTC Desire which is apparently the smart phone which the Nexus was based from (HTC manufactured the Nexus One for Google). Since the two devices are quite similar in terms of specifications, it really makes the decision to settle so much easier.

The Desire and the Nexus One are both using 1GHz Snapdragon CPUs and 5 mega pixel cameras. The screens on both devices are 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen displays with multi touch capabilities.

Anyway, even if Vodafone is offering the device to their customers, the closest they will get you to a Nexus One is by redirecting you online to Google’s store. They will however, provide you with a SIM card for your chosen plan.

Aside from the Nexus One, Vodafone is pretty much up to the brim with big name devices from high end manufacturers. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10, HTC Desire and HTC Legend are also coming early in April while the Apple iPad is expected to arrive by late April.

In other Vodafone related news, it turns out that the operator has recently undergone a cost cutting process which saw the closure of 6 stores and the removal of 375 employees due to redundancies. Despite this sad news, the operator is still pushing through with its busiest launches for the year.

Get to know more about Vodafone offering the HTC Nexus One on their official website at Softpedia.

It looks like Vodafone’s operations analysts and financial advisers have agreed that the overall loss of productivity brought about by lowered employee morale would still be smaller than the amount of money they would lose if they do not push through with the cost cutting solutions they have made.

In an effort to save money and resources, mobile network operator Vodafone UK has just announced that it let go of 375 employees that held redundant positions in the company. The move also saw the closing down of six Vodafone stores (employees of which are among the 375).

While this is made to save money for the company, plenty of eyebrows are being raised internally as the operator’s own people are starting to feel the blunt end of the cuts. Many have been witness to the cold and harsh manner in which many of their colleagues were escorted out of the building in tears as they were told to leave on the same day that they were told that they would be losing their jobs.

While union groups such as CWU and Prospect have taken a stand in helping out former Vodafone employees affected by the cut, the atmosphere in Vodafone’s offices are all but cheery.

Adding on more despair is Vodafone’s decision to remove the 30% bonus being received by 150 of its employees in Warrington. The sudden announcement of the ‘pay cut’ has left many current employees unhappy with the situation despite Vodafone’s claims that the step was taken to ensure a fair rewards system for the entire company.

The 30% monthly sales bonus is a powerful incentive that Warrington employees have enjoyed for quite some time. With this suddenly removed, the office is currently “not a happy place”.

Get to know more about the Vodafone redundancies and the removal of the monthly sales bonus at Mobile Today UK.

A female employee from Panda Research Blogs found a malware on her newly purchased HTC Magic smart phone. The malware was identified as a program that steals Lineage passwords.

For those not familiar, Lineage is a Korean made MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). It is an old title and has a slowly dwindling player population –mostly thanks to the newer Lineage II game sequel that has come out several years back.

Anyway, the malware has not caused any major damages and this is the first report of such an occurrence so there is the possibility that this report may be an isolated case. But in the event that it is not, the malware itself is not incredibly destructive (unless you actually play Lineage). The only real worry here is that Vodafone actually failed to protect its customer.

As a mobile network operator that provides handsets to their clients, it is also their responsibility to ensure that the product gets to the hands of the clients without any problems. Despite the fact that the problem can be rooted to many other reasons (internal employee mischief, supplier problems and others); the accountability of Vodafone in this instance is undeniable.

In any case, Vodafone is still in the middle of doing some serious cost cutting that has forced the company to close down 6 stores. About 375 job positions have been relieved of work due to redundancy. Some have raised concerns that Vodafone’s decision to just suddenly fire employees instead of giving them prior notice.

It would not be surprising that this malware incident may have been caused by a distraught employee. It is reported that union groups CWU and Prospect have already taken steps in helping out the 375 employees and are in talks with Vodafone regarding support and compensation.

Get to know more about the malware found on the HTC Magic at Know your Mobile.

Despite the fact that Vodafone will be launching several impressive smart phones and the Apple iPad this April, it has not stopped the mobile phone manufacturing from cutting down over 300 positions from the company due to redundancy. Details on the exact number of employees affected as still unconfirmed, but some reports are saying that 375 workers have lost their jobs from the network.

The sad news comes with comments from other Vodafone employees who have seen the whole affair unfold. It turns out that not a single one of the 375 workers were informed about the decision until the day itself. Employees were seen bursting into tears as they were escorted out of the company building in a most awful manner. Other colleagues in the company could not believe that their co-workers who have worked loyally for the company for years would be treated in such a cold and cruel manner.

The telecom union, Prospect has raised their own stand regarding the sudden job cut; national officer Steve Thomas states that:

“This is a disgraceful way to treat employees, particularly some very long serving and loyal members of staff who have been with Vodafone from the early days and have made the company a success.”

“We are also extremely disappointed to have learned about these cuts from the media and not from the company. We will be representing members throughout this process and we are advising all Prospect members to contact the union urgently before accepting the terms of any proposed individual agreement”

While it has been confirmed that both Prospect and CWU are helping out the employees, no details regarding compensation for the employees from Vodafone have been announced. In fact, it was just recently reported that bonus payments have been “slashed” for current employees as part of the cost cutting program.

Get to know more about the details on Vodafone’s internal problems at Mobile Today UK.

When March rolls over, Vodafone will be starting off an impressive lineup of Android smart phones.

The mobile network operator has already released the expected prices for the upcoming HTC Legend smart phone. They are currently offering the smart phone for as low as £2 (1.99) at a monthly tariff of £25 –it’s a great deal, though most might prefer to go for slightly more expensive deals with more free minutes.

The Legend was finally shown off by HTC at the previous Mobile World Congress. The device came out alongside the HTC Desire (previously known as the Bravo) and the HTC HD Mini. HTC’s Legend smart phone is considered to be the successor of the HTC Hero (also an Android smart phone) as it possesses similar specs. This smart phone stands out with its aluminum casing and sleek new look. It comes with a 3.2 inch AMOLED capacitive touch screen and a 5 mega pixel camera. Speed will not be an issue with Qualcomm’s MSM 600 MHz CPU running the Legend.

Just like the HTC Desire, the Legend uses the HTC Sense user interface. It takes away a little from the Android experience, but since the Sense UI is still fun to use, the change is insignificant. Overall, the Legend is a great deal for mid range smart phones for those who are not willing to dish out the extra few hundred Pounds for the Desire.

The Legend will be coming out with the Desire this March and next April, Vodafone is expected to being offering the Google Nexus One. While the Legend and the Desire will be available right off the shelves, the Nexus One will still be limited to the Google store.

Read more about the HTC Legend at Pocket Lint.

Frankly, it is not even the fault of the company. Despite the argument that a large corporation such as Vodafone should be fully responsible for everything that is released under the company’s name, there is simply no way that one can fool proof an inside job.

It turns out that an employee of the company used the official Twitter account of Vodafone UK to post a very offensive Tweet over the weekend. Employees of the company were quick to respond by deleting the post and sending in their apologies and assurances that Vodafone has not been hacked and that the Tweet was the result of a severe breach of rules by staff. No word has been given to the identity of the culprit or culprits.

The case is now being handled internally and it is unlikely that Vodafone would ever release the results of the findings. The last word was that the “employee” has already been suspended. Seriously, for such an act, it would not be a surprise if the individual was terminated and blacklisted from ever working in the UK ever again.

On the lighter side of news, Vodafone is hardly going to flinch from such a minor event. The operator is enjoying a continued growth in the number of their iPhone subscribers. Reports show that the launch of the Apple iPhone for the operator was a big success with over 100,000 unit sales within the first week of launch. Recent reports showed that Vodafone’s superior 3G network has attracted subscribers from O2 to switch networks –a claim that O2 Mobile vehemently denies.

Vodafone’s 3G network has been upgraded and expanded for over a year in preparation for the launch of the iPhone, and from the looks of things, their efforts are paying off.

Read the rest of the news regarding the Tweet from Vodafone at Mobile Today UK.

Promising the pinnacle of messaging and social networking integration, the Vodafone 360 internet-based mobile telephone service works hand-in-glove with the upscale features of the Samsung H1 handset to bring seamless people-centric functionality into the smartphone as well as your PC or MAC workstations.  Samsung made the handset exclusive to Vodafone and now get rebadged as the Vodafone 360 H1that was launched in the UK together with the new 360 service replacing the Vodafone Live.  The service now has 10 smartphones to choose from.

Availability

Vodafone’s Samsung H1 handset can be had free with a 24-month contract starting on a ₤35/month plan.  It can now be pre-ordered from Vodafone’s online site where you have a choice of either black or silver body color.  While Vodafone isn’t exactly the best carrier out there, it may be a good idea to give its new 360 service a try this Christmas, if only for its marvelous H1 smartphone exclusive to the serve.

Bang for the Buck Features at a Glance

What’s so marvelous about the Vodafone 360 H1?  For a start, it’s 3G with HSDPA/HSUPA so you can truly max out the Vodafone 360 social networking experience over the internet. It has WiFi, Bluetooth with A2DP, GPS, FM radio, 3.5mm headphone hack and 16GB of internal memory that has microSD expandability as well.  A couple of stand-outs include its gorgeous 3.5” AMLOED touchscreen with wide VGA resolution and 16 million colors.  Then there’s a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash.

The Vodafone 360 H1 runs on the nearly forgotten LiMo OS (Linux Mobile) that got serious following in the Motorola RAZR and ROKR models.  Eclipsed by the equally open-sourced Android, the LiMo Release 2 gets resurrected in the Vodafone 360 H1 with a slew of apps that has the right features to integrate your phonebook contacts with online VOIP, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook sites.  It’s integrated with the default Opera browser as well as WebKit widgets.  All that for free on the Vodafone 360 contract.

Vodafone’s new mobile phones consists of a Windows Mobile 6.5, and Android 1.6 Donut and a Symbian S60. The LG GM750 will be sharing its Vodafone limelight with a couple of other mid-tier smarts phones from other manufacturers sporting different operating systems. If that was not competition enough for LG, HTC has also brought out the HTC HD2, which is a Snapdragon powered WinMo 6.5 device.

Considering the competition, anyone willing to shell out loads of money for a WinMo 6.5 phone would do well to pass on the more practical LG GM750. As said, the GM750 is a practical device meant more for those in need of a decent Windows touch screen phone.

LG’s Windows Mobile 6.5

Unlike its predecessor, the GM730, the LG GM750 sports the latest Windows Mobile OS, version 6.5. This new version supports the recently launched application store, the Marketplace. The Marketplace has been up for a month now and has already received a few updates –such as compatibility for desktop computers, WinMo versions 6.0 and 6.1, as well as the inclusion of new anti-piracy measures.

Windows Mobile brings a lot of familiar yet updated features. Among the most useful WinMo applications is the Office for Mobile, which is used to handling Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and viewing PDF files. The Windows Media Player 10 provides excellent media playback capabilities as it handles many different audio and video file formats.

For those who are not too fond of the Windows Mobile operating system’s interface, LG has put in the S-Class user interface to make navigating the device a whole lot easier.

Vodafone Exclusive

The LG GM750 deals that Vodafone is offering will be the only carrier deals you will find for the LG GM750 until December. The device is available for free on certain plans. Other carriers have not confirmed the prices at which they will be offering the device when they finally launch it.

Come October 30, 2009, the Vodafone community of over 300 million subscribers will say goodbye to the Vodafone Live! But they will be waving farewell with such joy and anticipation as they welcome the release of the Vodafone 360.

A reinvention of its older version, the Vodafone 360 will be made available to users via the company’s Samsung H1 by October 30. By November, Vodafone 360 will also be offered by other mobile device manufacturers as well.

Indeed, no tearful good bye is happening with Vodafone 360 coming really soon. The Vodafone 360 will come in the network-and-hardware bundle, with different deals for varying packages. You might be wondering how both Vodafone and Samsung works; wonder no more as the company has put up an interactive demo of the features built in the phone, as well as how the 3D address book is easy to learn and operate.

Actually, the news should be all about a new adventure using the Vodafone internet portal with more advanced features and a new mobile device. As simple as that. But, no. There’s so much more.

As for the Samsung H1, it comes with an even bigger widescreen and a 3.5 inches OLED WGVA touchscreen which the users will find really helpful, particularly for their interactive needs. It also comes with a GPS, a camera with 5 megapixel capacity and a 16GB internal storage. More importantly, the classy black rectangle mobile device already comes with the custom applications for Facebook and other social networking tools around.

Of course, like most good things, the Vodafone 360 in Samsung H1 comes with a little price. But it definitely isn’t going to drain your monthly allowance or budget. Pegged at £35 each month for the duration of your chosen contract, that’s a small price to pay for getting all-the-time access to your Facebook friends and other social networks.

For more information, click here:T3