Branding is a good thing on many occasions. Branded cell phones tend to be cheaper and offer a combination of tools and services. But the branding that Vodafone is doing is close to ridicules. The branding is crippling the phones built in software, rendering the user experience inferior. It locks the user and do not offer much in return.Why do they have to put the link to Vodafone Live at every single extra button. Whenever you make a mistake and press the wrong button you will end up with another few notches on your bill, a connection and a few k of data is billed. For making a mistake! Wonder how much money they make on this.And the "offered" services? A bunch of links to material that cost way to much, why pay a lot for a crappy ring tone when the original song can be found on iTunes Music store for 99¢? The providers are as greedy as the music companies. On many occasions you pay double for the ring tone than for the original. If they would just offer some real services!What does this has to do with usability? When the branding interfere and cripples the user experience it wrecks all the effort phone producers put into producing a good user interface. It has taken companies like Ericsson years to go from disastrous UI design to acceptable and now quite good. It takes only months of Vodafone branding to put it back to acceptable and in some occasion disastrous.On the upside, I tried out a 3G card from Vodafone, apart from the ridicules orange red color and a few annoying software issues the connection was quite good. At first it was a strange feeling to sit down with a latte and be able work, email, read the news and browse. Ok, it wasn't WiFi but it was available at all the places I tried. Now I just wonder how they will be able to brand it harder and force me to use their "services". Hmm… filter my browsing, adding branding to all web pages, force me to use there mail…