Firstly, let's clear this up - Vodafone 360 is a service, not a handset. And the Samsung H1 is just the first of many 360-ready phones to come. At least, that was what Voda was keen to stress when I took a sneak peek at the service ahead of its launch this Friday.

The idea behind Vodafone 360 is that it makes your phone the hub of all your social networking, pulling all your contacts into one place. Vodafone customers can register at www.360.com and enter all their Facebook, MSN and Google Talk login details, so 360 can mash them together and store them on the H1 in one location.

The way The Samsung H1 displays these is either as a boring, conventional list, or in a cool Cover Flow 'floating 3D windows' stylee (as in the pic below). Simply tap on the person's window and you get a pop-up showing the ways your connected to them - phone contact, Facebook, etc - as well as their status and methods to contact them. You can even send them a geotag.

Don't worry if it looks a bit confusing to navigate - people can be pigeon-holed into colour-coded groups or there's always the aforementioned A-Z list view to revert to.

Twitterers should also fear not: I was assured that Twitter support is coming "very, very soon".

The coolest thing, visually, was actually the reinterpretation of call history. Vodafone has gone for more of an 'events timeline' which includes just about all of your contact with your social network, rather than just calls. Again, it's 3D-window-based, so you flick back and forth through events on the H1's touchscreen.

So, that leads me onto the Samsung H1... It's a touchscreen smartphone with typically Samsung-like styling. Yes, duller than a post-match interview.

But it's got a 5-megapixel camera and what a screen! It's an 800x400-pixel OLED number that shows up those flickable windows a treat. The interface is split into calling, contacts and apps, with a button below the screen for each.

So, all looks interesting, and having social networking mingled into traditional contacts certainly is the future. We'll bring you a full review and video hands-on as soon as we can.

The Vodafone 360 app will shortly be available for most phones, including iPhone, albeit without the Cover Flow-style navigation. The Samsung H1 with 360 installed is available from Friday, free on a £35-per-month contract.