With its icy cool design and unique interface, Samsung's new Drift for Helio finds your friends with Buddy Beacon and MySpace Mobile. Will it help you find the party, or leave you all alone?
Review summary of the Helio Drift:
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 There is a lot to recommend Helio's Samsung-made Drift, including its striking design, excellent menu interface, and wide range of features and compact shell -- a welcome change from Helio's two bulky launch phones, the Hero and Kickflip. The phone itself impressed us with features that seemed to go the extra yard, like the equalizer in the audio player, the cool GPS-aided Buddy Beacon or the solid photo management software on the phone. Also, we really enjoyed streaming video offerings that felt more like worthwhile content than sheer novelty, despite problems with video playback. Unfortunately, Helio still lacks on online music store -- disappointing, considering the Drift's 3G abilities -- and the phone's marriage of GPS and Google Maps is shaky, at best. Release: November 2006. Price: $225.
Pros: Slick design, especially in white; great interface; excellent calling and address book handling; unique video offerings; Buddy Beacon has a lot of fun potential.
Cons: Crashing issues installing Helio Media Mover; no streaming audio or music store; video playback was spotty; no Outlook calendar syncing; Google Maps is poorly integrated with GPS tracking.
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Full Helio Drift Review:
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Design
The Helio Drift is not your average Samsung slider. Perhaps it was the white finish on our review model, but we found the phone to be more alluring than even the Samsung SGH-D900 Black Carbon. The Drift slides open with a healthy snap, and the camera is permanently exposed on the back panel, so it can be used when the phone is closed. The keys have a soft white backlit glow, and the "Send" and "End" keys are highlighted in pastel. The sharp, 2.1-inch screen and the entire Helio menu structure -- more or less the same as on Helio's earlier Hero and Kickflip phones -- is clean and modern, with easy-to-read text and slick icons in the submenus. Overall, navigating the phone was a pleasant experience, especially since many of the phone's functions are well integrated; for example, you can access a messaging option from most applications. On streaming media and Web browsing pages, a menu at the top of the screen presents your History and Bookmarks for easy browsing.
Calling - Very good
The Helio Drift makes calls that sound good on both ends of the conversation. Calls were clean, though reception in lower Manhattan was spotty, ranging from two to four bars even while we were standing still. The phone has a speakerphone that was adequate, but not loud. Three-way calling was handled with a single key - press "Send" to make the second call and then again to join the conversation. We were pleased with the Drift's handling of our contact list. The PCLinkPro software synchronized the phone with our Outlook database via USB (you can also add contacts on Helio's Web site, which are then synced to the Drift over the air), and searching the contact list was a breeze, thanks to its live, while-you-type search capabilities, including T9 completion in the search field. Finally, the phone will search the contact list while you type and auto-complete the number. In battery tests, we got just under three and a half hours of talk time out of the phone, which is actually more than the three hours Helio promises. However, with GPS, Bluetooth, and the EV-DO radio all blazing, battery life will shrink considerably.
Messaging - Good
The Drift comes with a typical SMS/MMS interface, and a downloadable IM client offers AIM, Yahoo and MSN support. Messages are legible, with about half of a 160-character message displayed on screen at once, which is less than we prefer. The star of the Drift's show is MySpace Mobile, the same app that we enjoyed on the Hero and the Kickflip. Part of the Web browser, MySpace is hidden as a link on Helio's WAP homepage, making it difficult to find the first time through, and we had trouble logging on (the mobile version's logon is apparently case sensitive, while the Web version is not). But once you're in, the interface looks polished: the mobile MySpace reduces all profiles to the same layout, as opposed to the online version, which can look more like the inside of a high school locker. Once you're all set, you can e-mail, blog, post pictures and comment on your friends; pretty cool, although the interface can be slow. Unfortunately, the same problems that plague Samsung sliders like the Samsung U420 also hurt the Helio Drift. The keys are flat, with little tactile division to help you type without watching the keypad. The navigational keys don't help either, as "down" on the four-way key is perilously close to the "back" key, and we found ourselves backing out of messages and Web pages inadvertently.
Our favorites: MySpace integration with the ability to upload photos to your MySpace page is a nice touch
Our request: We'd like the ability to resize and adjust fonts while viewing text messages to get more characters on screen at once
Camera - Very good
Working with photos on the Drift can be entertaining. First and foremost, by sending your pictures as a message to UP (87 on the keypad), Helio will store your photos for uploading to MySpace. Image editing on the Drift is robust, with fun frames, filters and cropping options, as well as stickers, tiny graphics you can create and slap on your photos, and text overlays to add captions and cartoon bubbles. The Drift can send photos easily via MMS and Bluetooth and can print to USB and Bluetooth printers. With all these options, we're disappointed that Samsung built such a poor quality lens on the camera. Our snapshots looked blurry even on the camera's small screen; blown up to full 2-megapixel resolution, they looked fuzzy, pixilated, and overexposed, even while our white balance was set to Auto.
Our favorites: Caption bubbles and text overlays that let you insert your own words into pictures
Our request: A better camera lens for image quality that is actually acceptable
Video - Good
The video selection on Helio's network is refreshingly unique. Instead of relying on trailers and extended commercials for network television, Helio incorporates videos from iFilm and StupidVideos.com, as well as Comedy Central and Fox Sports. Though we had seen some of the videos before on YouTube, that is precisely the point: the content seemed aimed at network savvy young adults, rather than people who want to be impressed by TV actors on their phone. For music videos, Helio allows you to buy videos for yourself, for other Helio members, or "beg" another member for a music video (a clever feature introduced on the Hero and Kickflip handsets). Video quality didn't live up to the content, though. The picture quality was good, but videos tended to stutter at points of low reception, and it was common for even short, two-minute long segments to break and re-buffer once or twice. Originally, we reported that there was no full-screen video mode on the Drift, but the folks at Helio clued us into pressing the dedicated "Play" button on the side of the phone to view videos in full. That said, we were happy to find our Bluetooth stereo headset streaming audio during video playback.
Our favorites: The viral video section that lets us catch up on all the cool stuff we missed on YouTube
Our request: Smoother streaming for video content
Music - Good
The Drift will play all popular non-DRM music formats, storing them on its ample 100MB of internal memory or on a microSD card. Helio does not currently offer any streaming audio, radio, or music download options for their network, which is disappointing, considering the music store and streaming satellite radio options available on Sprint's Power Vision and Verizon's V Cast networks. For comparison, a plan on Sprint's network (from which Helio buys airtime), including unlimited multimedia, is priced within a few dollars of Helio's entry-level plan, though Sprint's plan includes streaming audio from Sirius satellite radio and a music download store. The music player was surprisingly robust, one of the few we've seen with a tweakable five-band equalizer for music. The phone's stereo speakers were loud enough for close listening, and the phone includes some "3-D Surround" options for playback which seemed to improve sound quality, though "3-D Surround" is a stretch. There is a dedicated play/pause button on the side of the phone for quick access to your music. Bluetooth stereo headphones were easy to setup and use, and streaming audio through our set sounded good.
Our favorites: A five-band equalizer for precise fine-tuning
Our request: Streaming audio from a great provider, like Sirius or XM
Multimedia - Very good
All Web pages accessed through the Drift are adapted by Google's Mobilizer function, which cuts long pages up into reasonable chunks and removes some images for easier loaded on a mobile browser. We like this function, and use it frequently while browsing on our Palm Treo 700P, so it was a welcome feature on the Helio Drift. The New York Times homepage loaded perfectly, and was cut into five pieces, making it easier to read. Navigation wasn't as easy, especially with the problematic four-way button's proximity to the "back" key, but pages loaded quickly over Helio's 3G EV-DO network (Sprint's network, actually). For multimedia accessories, the Drift comes with a USB cable and stereo headset, but we would have liked a 3.5mm headphone adapter, and maybe a microSD card, though the phone's internal 100MB is an admirable amount of storage.
Our favorites: Google's Mobilizer is a great filter to manage large, complicated pages
Our request: A 3.5mm adapter so we can use our own headphones
GPS - Good
The Drift has GPS capabilities as well, and Helio pairs these with its Buddy Beacon software and Google Maps for navigation. With Buddy Beacon, you set up a buddy list and the Helio shows you on a map (a Mapquest map, strangely) where your buddies are. We were able to track our friendly Helio representative in California, as long as he had his beacon turned on. It was a cool feature that made us wish we had more friends with the Drift to explore the possibilities (Geocaching, anyone?). Google Maps, on the other hand, is a poor navigational tool, even though we like the satellite images and easy-to-use one-line interface for addresses. Helio has basically taken the standard Google Maps Mobile software and overlaid a GPS tracking dot. The software does a great job giving you directions, but the software does not recognize when you've made a turn; you have to manually click from turn to turn, following your dot on the map. Adding to the frustration, the GPS tracks your movement once every couple of minutes, leaving you unsure of the remaining distance before a turn. Clearly, Helio needs to work more closely with Google to truly integrate its GPS device into its Maps application.
Our favorites: Buddy Beacon is the sort of feature that you could organize a party around.
Our request: Google Maps should track your location better for real turn-by-turn navigation
Odds and Ends
Helio provides two pieces of software to help link your Drift with your PC. PCLinkPro helps synchronize contacts, manage calendars, and handle some media files. It can sync your Outlook address book, but cannot synchronize your calendar. Also, PCLinkPro crashed while synchronizing some Outlook contacts, a problem Helio has acknowledged. Helio Media Mover transfers music and videos to the phone, and though in the past we have had a great experience with Media Mover (which automatically converts your video clips to a format compatible with the Drift), we could not get the program to run with the Drift. We got on the phone with Helio's Media Mover team, installed the software on two separate laptops (both Dell Latitude D420s), and tried using two separate Drift phones, but the software crashed every time. While we're disturbed that we couldn't get Media Mover to work, we haven't heard any reports of similar problems (either on discussion forums or elsewhere), so we're willing to give Helio the benefit of the doubt until we try the software on some other systems.
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Helio Hero
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Score: 71% When: May 2006 Worth: $275 Carrier: Helio
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This bulky black-and-silver slider – the second of two EV-DO handsets from virtual carrier Helio – boasts a 2-megapixel camera, streaming video and the ability to post photos on MySpace. Can the Hero soar above its 3G competitors?
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Helio Kickflip
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Score: 70% When: May 2006 Worth: $250 Carrier: Helio
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This 3G bi-directional spinner boasts integration with MySpace, streaming video playback and the ability to "gift," "beg" for or "rent" games and other content. Ben Patterson takes the Kickflip for a test drive.
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Price and availability
The Helio Drift is available immediately from Helio for $225.
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