Helio today launched the Ocean, a dual-slider combining a traditional numeric keypad and full QWERTY keyboard. Delivering a 3G experience, the Ocean merges instant messages, text messages, picture messages and emails from the major portals and ISPs.

Sliding vertically to reveal a traditional alphanumeric keypad for making calls, sending quick texts or surfing the web, the Ocean also opens horizontally to reveal a separate QWERTY keyboard suitable for emails or text and picture messaging, Web searches and full screen landscape video viewing.

The Ocean's integrated messaging dashboard includes access to Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail, Gmail, Helio Mail and EarthLink email. Customers can enter an ID and password and access accounts with no additional software or manual setup. It also lets users add two additional IMAP or POP3 email accounts and supports push mail from Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. Soon after launch, the Ocean will also support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, automatically downloaded to devices when available, wirelessly synchronizing Microsoft Office Outlook email, calendar and contacts from a Microsoft Exchange Server.

The Ocean also incorporates instant messaging access through Yahoo! Messenger, AOL's AIM Service and Windows Live Messenger. The Contact list syncs with Yahoo!, AOL and Helio Mail address books and introduces "presence detection" so users can instantly see which IM service their friends are logged into directly from their Contacts. Users can type a name from the Ocean's idle screen and the Helio Smart Dialer searches the address book to pull up full contact information, complete with icons to show if a person is logged in to Yahoo! Messenger, AIM or Windows Live Messenger.

The idle screen can automatically switches into search mode, delivering tabbed results from Yahoo!, Google, Wikipedia, Amazon.com and Yelp. The Ocean also has a built-in HTML browser also offering features like a mini map, zoom and full page viewing.

Sporting a 2.4-inch, 260K-color high-resolution QVGA display, the Ocean is viewable in both portrait or landscape modes. Its 2.0-megapixel camera takes 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 also GPS-enabled, giving users the option of attaching their GPS coordinates to their photos and video and uploading them to a photo service.

Additional features include an external stereo speakers, Bluetooth for wireless voice and stereo Bluetooth for untethered music and videos, 200 MB internal memory expandable via microSD to 2 GB, and USB Mass Storage Mode for drag-and-drop sideloading from a computer. The Ocean supports audio and video formats including MP3, AAC and WMA audio, and MPEG4 and H.264 video.

Carrying a multimedia chip designed to optimize music playback for up to 15 hours of continuous audio, the Ocean also supports over-the-air music downloads from Helio Music. The Ocean's 2.0-megapixel camera takes advantage of Helio UP, letting users take a picture with their device, tag it with metadata and upload it directly to Helio Album, Helio's photo service. Helio UP is also GPS-enabled, giving users the option of attaching their GPS coordinates to their photos and video and uploading them to a photo service for the first time from a mobile device.

The Ocean is now available for $295 at Helio Stores and online, and is scheduled to be available at select GameStop and EB Games locations beginning May 21 and soon after at thousands of additional retail locations across the U.S.

1. Posted by Kageluz	Tue May 15, 2007 7:43 pm
Like how it compares against the SideKick3 from a usability standpoint, as written by a 4 year user of the device? I bought my Ocean on Friday (1st day available). Being a SideKick user of over 4 years, i wanted to compare a few features between the two and give my comparisons from a SideKick 3 owner’s perspective. Check it out! Check out my personal SideKick 3 vs. Ocean usability review over at: AngryGamerNetcom One of my (over 10) personal comparisons: Speaker Phone-Input: I called several people over the weekend who are used to talking with me while I have them on my SK3’s speaker phone. I called, didn’t let them know that they were on the Ocean’s speaker and at the end of each call, they were all surprised when I told them. Each one said that I sounded better than when I am on my SK3’s speaker phone. My brother went as far as to say that it sounded better than when i’m talking into my SK3 (not using speaker). Your mileage may vary by signal strength, locale, environment, etc, but for me, the results were pretty consistent over the past 2 days. Advantage: Ocean enjoy!
2. Posted by bigb252	Wed May 23, 2007 12:00 am
DON'T USE another memory card! Your warranty will be voided by Helio if they find that you use another brand of SD than what came with the phone. Just a heads up.

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