helio-ocean-qwertyWith the iPhone getting all of the attention, it’s hard for anything else to break through the noise. Smartphone buyers – add this to your consideration list – the Ocean, from Helio. Ocean is that candy bar phone that slides in two directions – although that is really only part of the story.

The Ocean launched about a month prior to the iPhone and about half the price. Looking a the costs value of the Ocean, it certainly makes for one of the best smartphone deals on the market. In our experience, we’ve found lots of hidden “cool” and lots of little – “you’ve got to be kidding me”.

WHAT WE LOVE

  • Great value for the money – the phone has TONS of features and the plans are reasonably priced (they private label the Sprint network)
  • One touch search from default screen and has multiple result engines – it searches your address book first, then the web
  • Includes access to all major IM clients (but not Gmail) and email boxes (including Gmail); plus you can now pay $10 a month and access your Outlook Exchange account – this is a boon for business users and a major trump over the iPhone
  • Outlook exchange syncs your email, calendar and contacts
  • TV, Music, Game downloads – should appeal to just about everyone
  • SYNC your contacts from AOL or Yahoo accounts (this is pretty sweet and something we haven’t seen on other phones). Would be nice if it did Gmail.
  • GPS built in – access the map tool and see where you are at to get directions, plus to you can overlay traffic data. Similar to the Google Maps app on other phones, but the GPS “go to my location” option is killer.
  • Buddy Beacon feature to see where your friends with Helio phones are currently at. Sounds great in theory, but there are lots of problems with this app, especially when your wife is the only other Helio user you know.
  • Full QWERTY keyboard
  • SMS texting unlimited, photos and video too
  • A nice camera actually – more features than you would find on a regular phone camera
  • HelioUP account to store your photos online, sort of (you can’t access them over a PC), and makes it a snap to post to YouTube and Flickr.
  • MySpace application to access your MySpace account
  • Ability to Geotag your photos – you can enter the location, of if you are GPS enables, the phone can tag it (haven’t quite figured this one out yet).
  • Micro SD Card slot
  • 3G speeds, but no WIFI. With the feature set on the phone, lack of WIFI has not been an issue

DRAWBACKS

  • Lots of little things missing or not included – but the Ocean phone is only a month old
  • Should sync with Gmail contacts, but does not
  • Should include Gmail chat, but does not
  • No syncing of the phone calendar or notes feature with any apps
  • The syncing of contacts doesn’t always map fields correctly (Exchange is the exception, but the exchange app sits on its own from the phone contacts app)
  • Yahoo contacts sync has an error that creates duplicates of all your contacts (Helio admits this)
  • Geotagging photos is a manual process, not automated. And if you’re out of cel reception – you can’t access the phone’s GPS (sucks for hikers)
  • The phone is a tad slow – probably a weak processor
  • I seem to burn the battery out pretty often from frequent usage, so the phone may not be ideal for power users
  • Internet browser really sucks. They use the Google Confabulator as a proxy for all web addresses (basically scrubs the pages to read on a phone) even if it’s a wap site – can’t turn it off but you have the option to bypass it.
  • Online customer service response is slow, but they do respond
  • BuddyBeacon must be manually refreshed – best I can tell, you need to open the Buddy Beacon app to refresh it; would be great if this was automatic when the phone was “on”
  • BuddyBeacon, HelioUp all are not accessible via PC browser. This would be a great option.
  • They should create an open API to allow developers to create new apps (like the iPhone) – since this would be cool to accelerate innovation, given the phone’s potential. As a consequence, not much useful to download yet.
  • The phone does not specify limitations for video size uploads – you’ll discover this only after you’ve already recorded that perfect video
  • The web browser uses Google’s compression engine by default, regardless of site. You can’t shut it off, but you can click the “view html” on each site, which is timely. Do you can’t really get a true web experience. Even WAP sites go through the compressor. m.facebook.com and m.flickr.com addresses won’t even work in the browser.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I actually use Plaxo to sync my AOL, MSN and Outlook contacts, then I use my phone to sync with Exchange and AOL accounts, so I essentially have ONE contact file across all of my apps (except Google).  There is a great side by side comparison of the Ocean and iPhone you should read.

Whether on their site or through some special promo codes you can find online, you can get the phone or service for cheap. I got my phone for about $50 after rebates, discounts, freebies and the trade up program they offer. Looks like you can get unlimited service right now for $100/mo which is a steal.

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