The first thing that grabbed our attention about the Helio Ocean was its dual-sliding design. The double keypads (full QWERTY and numeric) are revealed by a quick slide in either a horizontal or vertical direction. Both keypads slide out with a healthy snap and lock into place, meaning you can't open one keyboard without closing the other one first. We were also surprised at how light the Ocean felt in our hands, despite weighing in at 5.6 ounces, and also appreciated a relatively small waistline at just 0.9 inches thick. The curvy Ocean is not wafer-thin, but still feels compact when you consider that it is packing two keyboards. The Helio Ocean also sports a smooth rubbery shell, which made it comfortable to grip.
Since the Ocean is a messaging phone, we were expecting a solid, intuitive interface, and we weren't disappointed. The Ocean intuitively groups different messaging options together, so you don't have to navigate though a bunch of menus. SMS and MMS are combined, as the Ocean is able to detect when a picture is attached to a message. Text messages looked clean and very legible on the Ocean's bright and sharp QVGA display. The 2.4 inch screen also fit a respectable amount of characters on the screen in both landscape and portrait modes.
The Ocean also offers up access to mobile e-mail, including Gmail, Earthlink, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and Helio mail. The slider can also add your business e-mail account. Instant messaging is another feature that was easy to use and access. While the Ocean features AIM, MSN and Yahoo messenger in its messaging interface, the handset's address book features "presence detection" that lets you know if your pals are signed on to IM, so can either IM them or chat with them. Besides being intuitive toward instant messaging, the Ocean's contact lists featured several fields of entry for numbers, e-mails and even MySpace pages. However, the contact list wasn't as graphically rich as the rest of the Ocean's interface, and seemed a little bland by comparison.
The Ocean also takes advantage of its 3G connectivity and offers a slew of multimedia features including Helio's Buddy Beacon service that lets you track the location of your friends, and GPS navigation with Google Maps. Music sounded clear on the Ocean's stereo speakers, but they weren't the loudest speakers we've heard. We liked that the Ocean supports over-the-air downloads as well as music subscription services, but you'll have to wait till we get our hands on a review unit for a full report on those features. We did watch a few video clips on the Ocean and found that they loaded quickly and looked nice and clean.
However, the Web browers left us with mixed emotions. We liked the quick access to the Web by simple typing in an address when the Ocean's main/idle screen is up, but were a little disappointed by the fact that it often pairs down Web pages that are heavy on the pictures, like infoSync's homepage. The Ocean couldn't open The New York Times homepage at all; however, this is typical with most non-business phones. We did like that the Ocean features several search tabs on its browser for popular sites, including Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia and Amazon. We also found the Ocean's "mini-map" feature convenient when it came to navigating through larger Web pages.
Rounding out the Ocean's multimedia features is Helio's UP service, which allows you to upload the pictures you take with the handset's 2-megapixel camera directly to Helio's Album photo service so you can quickly share them with your pals. We thought that the interface was clear and easy to navigate, but would like to spend more time with it before we give our final opinion.
Price & availability
The Helio Ocean is available from Helio for $200 with a contract agreement. A mail-in rebate of $100 is available.
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