A few moments with an iPhone and a Helio Ocean
So, as my Treo 650 frustrates me more and more my thoughts turn towards my next phone. Inevitably this leads me to the iPhone, but a contender in my brain has always been the Helio Ocean. I mean, I kind of know I’m not going to get one because the non-starter for me (which may, in fact be the prime mover for other folks) is that they resell Verizon and Sprint’s networks - that means no international roaming which is a no-no from my perspective. Other folks seem to prefer the CDMA networks over the GSM ones in the states, I’ve been on GSM as long as I can remember so I don’t know what it’s like on the other side. Maybe that’s for the best. :)
Anywho, I’ve always been curious to check out the Helio, it seemed like an excellent phone for technical needs, 3G, GSM, nice form factor, attention to design details - it’s definitely a contender. So since a couple buddies of mine have the iPhone and I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time mucking around with it, I thought I’d trek up to the newly opened Helio store and fondle an Ocean for a bit.
My first impression of it was pretty positive, it’s marginally thicker than my 650, but about the same height and a narrower - it felt pretty good and solid. The dual sliders were really nice - they slid open with a satisfying thunk. Very cool. The keyboards in both sliding positions were nice, the numeric keypad was good and the keyboard was easy to use. I know most people like the wide keyboards, but for some reason I really prefer a narrower one like on my Treo. Typing, though, was obviously easier on the Helio than the iPhone, but typing on the iPhone isn’t a problem for me, so it’s a win for the Helio but not a big one. One place where wide keyboards fail is in one handed typing, I can type (slowly) with one hand on the iPhone, but could not really manage it on the Helio. Shrug.
The screen itself is very sharp and crisp. Unfortunately it’s also quite tiny.. only 2.4″ diagonal and 320×240 - my Treo screen is much more usable and the iPhone absolutely crushes the Helio’s. Web browsing on the Helio is not an easy or pleasant experience, less so even than on my Treo (except for the faster network, which certainly helps, but not enough. Point to the iPhone.
A minor annoyance was the slow startup time of many of the applications. It was funny at first and then annoying to see a blank white screen with an old school Java symbol shown while the application loaded. It’s not even a nicely designed loading screen that you’ll see in almost any flash application - it reminded me of linux boot screens in the late 90’s if you can remember. Low res graphics, tiny gritty text at the top and the bottom. Not very polished at all. Even the most ardent iPhone hater must admit that the iPhone has polish if nothing else.
The interface in general on the Helio is - while not atrocious - certainly not the best. I was often quite confused as to where I was and how to do something. Very little of it was intuitive, I’m sure if I had one and used the apps frequenly I’d figure it out, but really pretty much every application I tried was slightly difficult to use. This is a far cry from the simplicity and easy to understand interface of the iPhone. The iPhone is the clear winner here.
Fearlessly, I pressed on. The area I was really interested in seeing on the Helio (after the sliding action) was on the variety of apps available. The iPhone is now well known and despised (in those odd places that despise iPhones) for it’s lack of applications. The Ocean honestly, did not seem much better. The GPS feature was cool - automatically showing you directions to anywhere you looked up in Google Maps and the mildly creepy buddy beacon that told you exactly where all your Helio toting friends are. But beyond that, it had a pretty basic emails app, web browser, camera and a bunch of games. It does let you take video and send picture messages, which is a nice feature (iPhone proponents will be quick to say that this will come soon to the iPhone, but who knows? Who knows what lurks in the heart of Steve Jobs?? The Shadow knows! Muah ah ah ah ah…. ahh… cough … ahem).
Talking to the store reps they suggested that a wealth of applications was to be found on the Helio website. Ahh.. surely that’s where I’d find the gold. So I left the store, disappointed for sure, but interested to see what apps there are. It turns out, there are a lot of games, but almost no applications. In fact, ssh one of the key apps I was interested in seeing is not at all supported - in fact ssl isn’t supported at all so you can’t even browse secure websites (at least according to this page). There certainly was no RSS reader. I guess they want to try and turn the Helio into a portable gaming station - it’s controls certainly lend itself to that but for other applications, I prefer the iPhone. And even though using web2.0 for all 3rd party apps is a lame cop-out, there are certainly a lot of online iPhone apps now, that look and work quite well and are free to boot. You gotta pay for any new Ocean apps you’re looking for.
In the end I found the Helio Ocean a real disappointment. It’s strengths didn’t tower over the iPhone and it’s weaknesses were many. I’m waiting to see what happens with an iPhone software update and failing anything monumental what the next generation will bring. And while I’m waiting perhaps one of the other makers (samsung?) will come out with something killer.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm
My new Blackberry 8830 is pretty great. Maybe not as great as Jennifer’s iPhone, but it has ssh, ebooks, a pretty good browser (+Opera Mini if you want) push mail and a very fast fluid interface for mail especially. Quick.
It does not have the ability to play internet radio streams, which I really enjoyed on my old Nokia, but, eh, whatever. And it is an international model that is on Verizon, whatever that means. The GPS is disable in the Verizon model, though (which sucks.) The Curve looks pretty great: GPS, standard size headphone jack, nice design. I’m pretty happy with the Bberry, but then again I use my phone for email mostly, so that’s no big surprise.
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
You and your blackberry’s. :) Yeah, the new RIMM’s do look pretty nice. The curve looks great, but I dunno, there’s something about them - i think the interface is very good for a very specific set of things and I like the notion of possibly doing things outside that set. Really, I like me some touch screens, the ocean was interesting because of it’s double slider and it’s decisions on all the diff’t ways it could be used. Ultimately, though, I want my screen to not get worse than my treo’s.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:53 am
[...] Helio should have been in with that group. To me though, they’re just a hardware company. The Ocean is awesome as a piece of hardware, I love the feel of it and the dual sliders is a great physical interface. But just like the other big handset vendors, they couldn’t care less about the software. So much effort spent on every detail of building the phone and not a moment for the software powering it. A shame. [...]