Helio Ocean

The Helio Ocean is the first dual sliding phone that allows for both vertical and horizontal sliding. It opens horizontally to reveal a query board and vertically to become a phone. The Helio Ocean spots an oval shape with a rubberized shell to protect it from scratches. The dual slider phone features both an alphanumeric keypad as well as a full QWERTY keyboard. It is available in black.

Specifications
The Helio Ocean measures 4.33 inches x 2.20 inches x 0.86 inches (H x W x D) in dimension and weighs approximately 5.61 oz including its provided standard battery. It spots a QVGA display that can support up to 260 k colours and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The display measures 2.4 inches diagonally. Besides that, the Helio Ocean is also 3G capable via EV-DO networks for fast multimedia downloads. Not only that, the Helio Ocean has a battery life that can last up to 5.1 hours of talk time. In addition to that, its memory system also has up to 200 MB of internal memory available to user for storage. Besides that, it also allows for memory expansion via a memory card slot that can support microSDTM memory cards. In addition to that, it can also comes with a USB Mass Storage mode. There is also a built in digital camera of 2.0 mega pixels with built-in flash function and digital zoom capabilities. Besides taking still pictures, the camera is also capable of performing video recording in MPEG 4 formats. In addition to that, the Helio Ocean also incorporates audio stereo Bluetooth wireless technology. The Helio Ocean also comes with its own media player called the Personal Entertainment Center that supports media formats including MP3, AAC, WMA, MPEG4, H.264, VOD and MOD. Additional features include POP and IMAP email support, and photo caller ID. The Helio Ocean also has support for Helio Music. In addition to that, it also has support for GPS-enabled services and applications. The Helio Ocean comes in a package that includes the smart phone, a battery, charger, stereo headset, USB cable and 2.5 to 3.5 mm headset adapter. In terms of its design, the Helio Ocean spots a flowing minimalist face and a soft-touch surface. Its traditional alphanumeric keypad that is revealed when the phone is slid vertically can be used to make calls, send quick texts or even surf the web. When slid horizontally, the Helio Ocean reveals a separate full QWERTY keyboard that can be used for heavy-duty messaging, web searches and full-screen landscape viewing of crisp images and videos. In addition to that, it also has an integrated messging dashboard that includes all out of the box built-in access to AOL email and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Email and Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, EarthLink email and Helio Mail, thus successfully locating all your email, text messages, picture messages and Instant Messages in one spot for convenience. Not only that, it also supports push mail from Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN Hotmail as well as Mail for Microsoft Exchange. Besides that, it can also wirelessly synchronize Microsoft Office Outlook email, calendar and contacts from a corporate Exchange Server. An additional feature incorporated into the Helio Ocean is its contact lists with IM status that seamlessly syncs with Yahoo!, AOL and Helio Mail address books to help you find the quickest way to reach a friend by either pulling up a Contact through Helio’s user interface or by typing a name from Ocean’s idle screen for the Smart Dialer to search the phone’s address book and pull up full contact information. The Contact’s profile will also show if the person is logged in to Yahoo!, AOL and Windows Live Messenger.

Reviews

“The Helio Ocean is a great beginner smart phone, with a fantastic array of multimedia features and Internet capabilities that are sure to please both consumers and mobile professionals.” (CNET, 2007)

“Our final recommendation would be: buy it, but only after you consider our caveats. If there’s one or two features you really need, but aren’t met but the Ocean, then you’re better off somewhere else. Otherwise, this is a fantastic multimedia messaging phone with features that are hard to top. – Jason Chen and Brian Lam” (Gizmodo, 2007)

“Would I recommend the Ocean? The short answer is a definite yes, with the understanding that what you’re looking for is a well-featured device and not a smartphone. It’s still too early for me to rate the Ocean, since I’ve had just 12 hours of usage on it, but you can be sure that SlashGear will bring you a follow-up report very soon!” (SlashGear, 2007)