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.
Review summary of the Helio Kickflip:
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 While the Kickflip isn’t without its innovations – we love the ability to gift, beg, and rent content, the MySpace integration shows promise, and we look forward to the upcoming PC sync utility – this bulky spinner stumbles badly with its shaky messaging and calling features, mediocre camera, middling video offerings, and poor battery life. Release: May 2006. Price: $250.
Pros: Cool form factor design; bright, detailed display and slick user interface; ability to gift, beg for and rent videos and games; MySpace integration; excellent PC utility for importing music and video; video-out port
Cons: Bulky and heavy; poor battery life; no Bluetooth; so-so messaging; weak multimedia content (for now); foggy snapshots; shaky calling features
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Full review of the Helio Kickflip:
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When virtual carrier Helio announced it was brining a pair of Korean-made 3G handsets to the U.S. market, wireless geeks across the country (including us) quivered with anticipation. After all, phones like the cutting-edge Kickflip spinner and Hero slider don't make it to our shores very often. But our initial excitement cooled once we put the Kickflip through its paces. While it's blessed with fantastic looks, a vivid display, streaming video playback, integration with MySpace and the ability to gift, beg or even rent games and videos, the Kickflip is saddled with subpar messaging and calling features, the lack of Bluetooth, limited multimedia content and weak battery life.
Lookin' good
Nearly featureless from the front, save for the two-inch display and small speaker and mic slots above and below the LCD, the pearlescent Kickflip looks like it could have been designed in Cupertino. The phone spins open (clockwise) with a nudge from your thumb, revealing the roomy keypad and turning on the bright, two-inch LCD. All very nice, but at 3.9 by 2 by 1 inches, the Kickflip felt pretty thick in our jeans pocket, not to mention heavy at 4.5 ounces.
We were quite impressed by the Kickflip's brilliant, 262,000-color TFT LCD. Images on the 240 x 320 display looked crisp and colorful, with no pixel lines in sight. The Kickflip’s slick, animated menus are a welcome change from the dreary menus we see on most phones; indeed, surfing around the Kickflip's various screens was a pleasure.
The Kickflip's broad, flat navigational controls and numeric keys were easy to use; our fingertips had no trouble dialing numbers or selecting options. Along the right edge of the phone are play/pause and skip forward/back controls, as well as a dedicated camera button, while volume up/down buttons and flaps for USB and a video/audio out port (a nice option, although you’ll need an optional AV cord) sit on the opposite edge. Unfortunately, there are no soft keys or navigational controls on the front of the phone, which means you can’t navigate the main menu without opening the handset. That’s the price you pay for minimalism, we guess. And finally, you'll find a microSD expansion slot along the bottom of the phone.
Whither Bluetooth?
The dual-mode Kickflip (800/1900 CDMA EV-DO) comes with a mixed bag of calling features, including a speakerphone, voice memos, and the ability to record phones calls (just make sure to tell your buddies that you’re recording them, less you run afoul of privacy laws). However, there's no voice dialing on the Kickflip, and conference calling is pretty clunky: while you can join two calls, you can’t switch back and forth, and we couldn’t hang up on one caller without disconnecting both. Also missing from the mix is Bluetooth, which means no wireless headsets (and no wireless-modem use or object transfers, for that matter). That said, if you're looking to wirelessly transfer your contacts to the Kickflip's address book (which can store up to 1,200 entries), you can sync them over the air using Helio’s Web-based e-mail client or with an upcoming PC sync utility, which should be available within the next few weeks, according to a Helio representative.
Messaging options on the Kickflip are pretty weak. While you get SMS/MMS messaging and WAP e-mail and IM, there's no on-board support for POP or IMAP e-mail and no built-in IM client. And while we've been hearing all about Helio’s integration with mobile Yahoo services – including Yahoo Mail and IM – there's nothing more here than links to Yahoo’s WAP service, which you can access from any phone with a WAP browser.
Posting on MySpace
The Kickflip's integration with social networking behemoth MySpace is a bit more impressive. The phone lets you log into your account, browse your list of friends (as well as view their images and check their blogs), post messages to your own blog or bulletin board, find and add new friends, and read and reply to your MySpace e-mail – not bad. Posting photos to your MySpace profile or blog is a chore, however. We were hoping you could snap a picture and post it (with a message, ideally) directly from the Kickflip’s camera app. But no; instead, you must send your snapshot to the MySpace service via MMS (you enter the number "87" in the To field), then log on to the MySpace mobile site, create a new blog entry, browse for and select the image you just sent, and hit Post. We think posting a snapshot to your MySpace blog should be easier than this.
Speaking of the 2-megapixel camera, we weren't too thrilled with the snapshots we took. The camera itself boasts a formidable range of features, including an LED flash, 4X zoom, a rapid-fire mode (up to nine snapshots), plenty of light, brightness and color settings, 10 picture frames, landscape and macro modes, and video capture. However, we were bummed by the lackluster image quality; our snapshots looked foggy and washed out, as though the camera lens was smudged (which it wasn't), while our videos looked murky and juttery (par for the course with a camearphone).
Meager multimedia
Turning to Helio's multimedia offerings, we were less than impressed with our choices, especially compared to what we’ve seen on Verizon V Cast and Sprint Power Vision. Music fanatics will be bummed to learn that as of this writing, there were no songs available at all (a Helio rep said a music store is coming soon) and a few hundred full-length music videos ($2.50 each) – a collection that pales compared to the hundreds of thousands of songs available on Sprint and Verizon's respective music stores. In terms of mobile TV, you can stream clips from sources such as ABC (Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lost, and oddball news from ABC News), Fox Sports, Fox Soccer, Fuel TV (extreme sports), Speed TV (auto racing), Rocketboom (video podcasts), and Adult Swim – again, slim pickings compared to Sprint and Verizon. If you're craving breaking news, don't hold your breath; most of the videos we saw were of the evergreen variety, with none of the hourly updates we've come to expect.
Back on the plus side, the Kickflip comes bundled with a great utility for moving your own tunes and videos to the phone. Once we installed the Helio Media Mover onto our PC, we were able to select MP3s and AACs for transfer to the phone; meanwhile, the app takes your videos and coverts them for use on the Kickflip (our MPEG and AVI files worked fine, but not QuickTime MOV files). You sure can’t do that on a Verizon or Sprint EV-DO phone.
Buddy, can you spare a tune?
Another novelty on Helio phones (including the Kickflip and the Hero slider) is the ability to "gift" and "beg" for games, apps and videos. Know a fellow Helio buddy in need of Tetris, or are you jonesing for the latest Gorillaz video? Just click Gift to send a little digital present, or Beg to transmit a humble plea to a generous friend. We’re also impressed by the ability to rent games for 99 cents a week; we’d love to see the big four carriers follow suit.
We tested the Kickflip in New York City, call quality was good; our buddies sounded loud and clear, and callers told us they couldn’t tell we were on a cell phone. The Kickflip hit a speed bump in terms of battery life, however; we got only 2.75 hours of talk time, well shy of the promised 3.3 hours, while standby time was only about 3.5 days, compared to its rated time of 8 days.
Price and availability
The Helio Kickflip will start selling for $250 ((Helio)) in May 2006.
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