Helio today introduced the Helio Ocean, the world's first dual-slider combining a traditional numeric keypad and a separate full QWERTY keyboard in a single device.
Having a flowing minimalist face and a soft-touch surface, the Ocean slides vertically to reveal a traditional alphanumeric keypad for making calls, sending quick texts or surfing the web, and horizontally to reveal a separate full QWERTY keyboard suitable for emails or texts, web searches and full screen landscape viewing of images and video.
The Helio Ocean sports a huge, 2.4-inch, 260K-color high-resolution QVGA display viewable in both portrait or landscape modes, external stereo speakers, a 2.0-megapixel camera with digital zoom and flash for photos and over two hours of continuous video recording, Bluetooth for wireless voice and stereo Bluetooth for untethered music and videos, 200 MB internal memory expandable via microSD to over 2 GB, and USB Mass Storage Mode for drag-and-drop sideloading of content. Ocean supports an array of audio and video formats including MP3, AAC and WMA audio, and MPEG4 and H.264 video, all delivered over a nationwide high speed 3G network.
The Ocean also carries a special chip designed to optimize music playback for an estimated 15 hours of continuous audio, has fast sync speeds and support for both subscription and individually purchased music. The Ocean even allows users to browse the Web or their music library without interrupting music playback. Whether listening to tracks downloaded over-the-air from Helio Music, playing 3D or multiplayer games, taking pictures on the go and posting them to MySpace, or utilizing built-in GPS technology for Google Maps for mobile or Buddy Beacon, Ocean keeps Helio members in touch with their friends better than ever before.
Combining email, text messages, picture messages and Instant Messages in a single messaging hub, the Ocean's integrated messaging dashboard includes out-of-the-box access to Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail, Gmail, Helio Mail, and EarthLink email, as well as the ability to add additional IMAP / POP3 email accounts.
Incorporating Instant Messaging access through Yahoo! Messenger, AOL's AIM Service and Windows Live Messenger, the Ocean's Contact list also syncs with Yahoo!, AOL and Helio Mail address books and incorporates live "presence detection." With presence detection, users can instantly see which IM service their friends are logged into, so they can start typing a name from Ocean's idle screen and the Helio Smart Dialer searches the address book and pulls up full contact information, complete with icons to show if a person is logged in to Yahoo! Messenger, AIM or Windows Live Messenger. Even Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is available for wirelessly synchronization with Microsoft Office Outlook email, calendar and contacts from a corporate Exchange Server.
With the Ocean, there's no need to open a search box. Just begin typing on the QWERTY keyboard from the idle screen and the device automatically switches into search mode. Ocean has a built-in HTML browser, so users can visit WAP sites or surf any Web site on the Internet. The Ocean's Web browser also lets users view and save Web images to their device and offers features like "mini map" and "page optimize."
The Ocean's 2.0-megapixel camera will take advantage of Helio UP, which lets users take a picture with their device, tag it with metadata including a title, description, keywords and location information and upload it directly to Helio Album, Helio's photo service. Helio UP is GPS-enabled, giving users the option of attaching their GPS coordinates to their photos.
The Helio Ocean is planned for launch in Spring of 2007 at a suggested retail price of $295.
I ordered Helio's Ocean and have been using it for about 4 days now and I gotta tell you, its a good phone but there are issues. Hopefully they can tweak the software and fine tune the users experience.
The phone has a simple interface UNTILL you use the web browser. It is beyond confusing as to how to get to some of their touted features. The browser needs better forward and back page buttons. It has a back button but needs a forward. The video stream link section forces you to scroll through pages of video clips you are not even interested in just to get to the ones you want. It would be nice if they grouped the videos by show names first and then list each episode. The main web page isn't customizable so you cant just quick pick the sites you use daily. You are forced to save them through a bookmark listing in a menu. Very annoying considering how much clicking it takes to navigate web pages.
Integration of media The phone has a nice camera and the ability to snatch images off websites. The audio player is surprisingly loud and clear. The problem starts when you want to use this media in say contact cards or use a song as a ring tone. Either the steps needed are just too complex to do, or the software isn't sufficient in assisting the user in making it happen.
Like I said the phone is good but the software needs work. The phone's software should make it simple to add an image from the web to a contact card, or wallpaper, or to select a song as a ring tone. They need to make the phone work for the user instead of the user working for the phone.
2. Posted by mobijunkie
Wed Aug 15, 2007 8:32 am
I just got my helio oceanand i love it.
3. Posted by thowell
Sat Sep 22, 2007 8:01 pm
I got my ocean 10 days ago and I love it too! So many features. I have to say having Google Maps and GPS built into it is awesome. Hey, where did you get your ocean's from? I got mine at
hellohelio dot net and they shipped it quick.
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