So I’ve had my new Ocean for about 12 hours now, and I’ve really only been able to play with it for about 4 hours. So far, it’s pretty badass.

So here we go. I found out when I was buying it that it did not use a SIM card. This wasn’t a big deal to me (though it was a bit of small letdown), but if SIM cards are important to you, then Helio aint for you. The Dual slider works flawlessly, yet I cant stop thinking about how much it’s gonna suck if the spring system ever breaks. The nice part with it is that you can close the slide and open it the other way without losing whatever your’re looking at(with automatic screen orientation adjustment), and once you’re done, you can close it and it automatically locks all keys.

The 3G wireless is remarkably fast, and the internet that comes with it is great. As soon as you open the keyboard, you can start typing for a search. No navigation needed. Just slide and type. For some reason it defaults to yahoo search, and I cant seem to figure out how to switch it to google, but I guess I can deal with it. It also has a few special portal sites that are customized for Helio, such as myspace and youtube, which is kind of nice as I dont have to look at all their other crap. However, the actual web browsing experience aint all that great. It’s not bad, but it definitely rivals the iPhone by a long shot. The most annoying thing about it is that it doesn’t just scroll down the screen. It basically tabs from link to link and then does a “page down”, so if you were looking at something in the middle of the screen and went down to try and get it up to the top, you’re pretty much SOL, cause it’s up and gone out of view. And, it also can stream media as well, so thats cool.

And now, the best part. GPS with Google Maps. This feature is just freaking awesome. As soon as you load up G-Maps, it comes up with your location. Then, you do a search for, say, Pizza Hut. It will then give you directions from your current gps location to said pizza hut. Oh, and did I mention that it does both maps and satellite view? yeah, it does that. One last thing on this note. You can also get the Garmin Turn by turn service. But, if you don’t feel like paying $10 a month for it, you can also just pay a $3 one time/day rental fee, which is pretty cool. I might even end up using that one someday.

The camera seems pretty nice. A 2MP shot with flash (yes, a real flash) that also does video (only 320×240). It will also perform a geotag, where it imprints your gps location on the photo. That parts pretty cool. From there, you can upload your photos to your online album and even edit them right on the handset itself. Oh yeah, you can also upload (and sync back and forth) your whole contacts list as well.

The media player isn’t bad, but trying to figure out just what it will and wont play is kind of a pain. The video especially. There also is no manager for it. You basically just plug it into USB and it’s it’s own portable drive, so you just copy and paste. This kind of sucks, becouse I would so much rather use iTunes (i’d even settle for WMP) than nothing. For audio it plays the usual, mp3, WMV, and even AAC (which makes me very very happy). The video, however, I haven’t yet figured it out. I’ve tried about 6 different formats and still cant find one it will play. I’m thinkin’ it might have something to do with the length of the filename, but I’ll have to wait till I get home to find out. As far as the memory goes, the iPhone once again definetely has this thing beat, sort of. There is only 200Mb internal memory, but it can take a 2Gb micro-sd card (where as the iPhone doesn’t have any removable media). So I guess I can just get a few flash cards and be good to go.

For my last point of the day, I’ll talk about the IM/email capabilities. It comes ready to access any and all of your email accounts. Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc, and it can even set up an account with MS Exchange…..if you feel like paying for it. Oh, and those webmail accounts you can check? You can also use their IM programs as well. And if all those email accounts aren’t enough for you, you also get your own @myhelio.com email account as well.

Okay, I think I’m done. I’ll probably give some more ups and downs after I play with it for awhile.

Update: i just found out that I don’t have to buy ringtones. Ever. All I gotta do is rename any audio file extension to .mmf and email it to the phone, and then save it as a ringtone. Thats it. SWEET!!!! FREE RINGTONES FOR LIFE! Thank You Heliocity.net!

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