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By now, I’m sure you’ve read all the reviews about the Helio Ocean from all over the web. The purpose of this review however, is to provide information about how the Ocean has evolved since its inception for the few of you who either didn’t immediately grab the Ocean, just heard of it, or the ones who did grab it immediately and decided to return it, and why I’m still an Ocean user…all in a single review!

For you all who haven’t had a proper introduction of the Helio Ocean, I will give a brief synopsis of some of the key features/designs:

• Dual-Sliding design: Slides down for the numeric keypad as well as sliding sideways to reveal a QWERTY keypad.
• Features a 2 megapixel camera with flash, capable of taking shots from 240×180 to 1600×1200 as well as video.
  • Allows easy transfer of pictures by putting it up on to myspace and helio album as well as sending it through email and picture messages.
• Built-in application that organizes all instant message apps/emails/text messages/etc. on a single screen that displays number of new messages.
• GPS enabled google maps, never get lost again!
• GPS buddy beacon which allows you to stalk your friends (if they let you, you must ask for permission first) who also have Helio! Uses MapQuest however, Helio is designing it to switch to google maps. No ETA on that yet.
• Nice 2.4 inch QVGA display, Bluetooth, and matted black finish
• Neat little button on the corner that allows to check new messages, voicemail, IMs, etc.
• Start typing a name on the QWERTY keypad and Ocean pulls up the person’s information. Handy alternative to looking through the address book.

image credit: www.howardchui.com, gizmodo.com

There are a lot of things I did not mention on purpose (It’s been reviewed several times already), so for a detailed review of things that haven’t changed much on the Ocean, I recommend the review done by Gizmodo at:

Gizmodo Helio Ocean Review

After having something so long, you become quite knowledgeable of it, being aware of it quirks as well as its benefits and negatives. “So, what have you found out about the Ocean?” you say? Well, here are some of my observations:

• Good Durability: I don’t know how many times I’ve dropped my cell phone (and not just around the house on carpeted floor, but outside on the sidewalk, in parking lots, etc.), but the matted finish is very forgiving and the phone itself works just fine. I remember a trip to New York City where I was walking down some stairs from the subway and dropped my phone as well as stepping on it! I thought that was the end for my phone, but was surprised to see that it still worked great…minor scratches and no screen damage!
• Looks from people, especially the younger crowd: I take public transportation to work as well as hanging out on weekends, so I would consider myself to have a fair amount of being out in public. When I whip out the Ocean, I get quite a bit of looks when I slide it sideways when just browsing the web and then sliding it down to receive a call. I guess this all depends on where you live however; I have yet to see anyone else with an Ocean around the D.C. area.
• Navigation: Despite what people say, in my opinion, I around quite easily when checking my emails, going online, making calls, writing IM & text messages, etc. The reason is that there are various hot keys that you can use to quickly get to where you want. Also, getting there manually isn’t so bad either…I’m pretty lazy in general, but even so, I wouldn’t consider getting around tedious at all. True, it might be slower navigating compared to other phones by a few seconds, but come on, who cares.
• Web Browsing: Now I’ve done a lot of web browsing, and I can tell you, besides the obvious things already mentions in previous reviews, I think it’s generally not bad, not bad at all. Given, Helio’s browser is no Firefox or Safari. It does a decent job however, of displaying sites fairly accurate in most situations.
• Typing using the QWERTY keypad: I don’t have huge hands nor do I have the smallest. I think I type pretty fast, even when I first bought it (I would get comments from my Sidekick friends how fast I type when firing text message exchanges). After owning it for several months, naturally I type even faster. I haven’t had any experience with the Sidekick, but I’m pretty sure you’re looking at losing at most a few seconds…again, I consider that an insignificant difference.
• Slight glitches: Not a common occurrence, but every so often, Ocean’s software will freeze up (can’t recall where it happens). I can’t really further elaborate because it just doesn’t happen that much to me, but I thought I’d bring this up anyway. What I do know is that if this does happen, you simply just close the phone and let it send itself back to the main screen.

There are a couple of features added to the Ocean since its birth. The major ones would be YouTube and Helio’s FileViewer.

Helio’s File Viewer is a great application that allows you to accurately view pdf, excel, word, and powerpoint files as well as images. This is especially handy when downloading attachments from email. Larger files take some time to load, but in general, it’s not bad at all. It’s great to review a powerpoint on the Ocean while I’m on the subway instead of opening my laptop or wasting paper printing it.

The YouTube application software is pretty cool. There have been other reviews considering it even better than the iPhone’s! The User Interface is sleek and quite intuitive. Helio offered a YouTube application before, but it was clunky at best, as well as only searching through YouTube Mobile only, not taking full advantage of YouTube vast network. Other notable features to comment is the ability to sign on to your account and do the various things associated with that. Also, uploading videos is a snap. You can browse through the Ocean for existing videos to upload, or use the application to record and upload as well. Some gripes about it are the slow loading times when opening it up the application initially and buffering. Depending on your signal strength and the video, it could take some time to buffer. Other than that, it’s a great addition to the Ocean…definitely saved me from absolute boredom when waiting 6 hours at Times Square for that darn ball to drop for New Years.

Garmin mobile is a neat little application as well. Voice prompted turn by turn directions and gas station indicators are some of the cool features that this application provides. Unfortunately, it’s not free ($10/month and $3/day) and I would just stick with the GPS google maps in my opinion.

A recently new one (or new to me anyway!) is Facebook support. Helio now offers a specially designed Facebook for the Ocean like how they did with MySpace. I’ve only used it briefly, but my initial impressions are that it’s much easier to navigate around than the regular Facebook site, and the interface is well organized. It might just be me, but I think it actually loads faster compared to the regular Facebook site.

So how do I feel about the Ocean after owning it for several months? I have to say, I’m still a fan of it. Hopefully it’s not too surprising after reading this review why I’ve stuck with the Ocean. Certainly not as great looking as an iPhone, but it’s features and design makes up for it. Continual support by giving us new (and useful) features gives a nice touch. Now if they could give us updates on the operating system itself that would be great. But who knows, maybe they will. Whatever the case may be, I definitely will own this phone for a while.

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