Hardware review: Vodafone Blue Facebook Mobile Phone

It would be rather silly to ask why you own a mobile phone. To keep in touch with other people would be the obvious reply. But what if you are addicted to Facebook and you can’t live without it? Now there’s a mobile phone for that.

Everything revolves around the use of Facebook. You cannot access the phone if you don’t log in to Facebook

The Vodafone Blue Facebook Phone is the ideal mobile phone for Facebook addicts. Vodafone designed the set with these people in mind and in fact access to Facebook takes over the whole phone. Calling and SMS are still possible but accessing Facebook is the most important and straightforward task on this model.

Everything revolves around the use of Facebook. For example you cannot access the phone if you don’t log in to Facebook. If you try to send an SMS you get the option to use Facebook. In the picture gallery you get access to both the pictures stored on the phone and your pictures on Facebook.

This phone does not sport the Android or any other popular operating system. Facebook is the operating system and it takes a learning curve to get to know the new settings and buttons which are not in the traditional places of the established mobile operating systems.

This model is relatively small with a colour 2.4 inch LCD screen, which is good enough for the Facebook chores but it’s not a touch screen, something we have come to expect in the latest phones. Users have to use the good old navigation buttons.

The Vodafone Blue Facebook Phone is not a 3G phone and depends on GPRS, which means that no video calls are possible and the data connection is much slower than 3G, even though the phone accesses a mobile version of Facebook which uses less bandwidth. There is Bluetooth but no Wi-Fi connection, which is quite strange for a phone that its main purpose is to access something which exists only on internet.

The phone has a camera but it is only 2 megapixel, which is not very good indoors and at night.

There is a full physical QWERTY keyboard (a virtual keyboard is not possible as the screen is not a touchscreen) and it is quite good when typing statuses and comments on Facebook.

Battery life is good and the fact that the screen is small and the internet connection is GPRS saves battery life.

There’s an in-built FM radio and it’s easy to listen to music through the MP3 facility. There is a micro SD Card expansion slot which can hold up to 16 megabytes of content.

All this goes to show how tight the integration is between the phone and Facebook, with features coming as standard on other smartphones considered redundant on this one. If Facebook is the first and only concern, then this mobile phone is for you. Otherwise, look elsewhere for different features even at a similar price tag.

Vodafone Malta gave a review copy of the Vodafone Blue Facebook Phone to i-Tech.

www.vodafone.com.mt