Righto, so yeah, no iPhone for me.
Instead, i got a Helio Ocean. Mind you, this is probably the death blow against Helio since i tend to purchase stuff that generally fails in the marketplace. (The fact that Nintendo hasn't died yet is a minor mystery to me, but that's beside the point.) Here's my requisite Ocean post:
Why the Hell did you get an Ocean
Well, for one thing, i really couldn't see myself spending $600+ on an 8GB web device. No, i didn't say phone or ipod, i said web device. Most of my mobile time is spent not using my voice at people. i have exactly zero iTunes (High rate Variable MP3s, WMAs and a few DRM'd WMAs i've yet to double burn and unlock.) i see not the love of iTunes so that's pretty much dead in the water.
No, what i use is data. Lots and lots of data. i beat the hell out of web servers, mail clients and other forms of connectivity constantly. So when i look at these devices, that's the watermark i use. Helio offers an all you can eat data plan (which is really Sprint's EVDO all-you-can-eat data plan) for around $65 bucks a month. Granted, i also get 500 minutes a month right now, but i might be able to do something with some of their plans to pick and choose what i want. Maybe. Depends on how lazy i am and whether or not i can figure out how to divy up time so it's deductible.
Plus, since the iPhone is currently got them running scared, they dropped the price of an Ocean by $100.
So, what's annoying
Well, first off, the fine folks at the Helio store in Palo Alto. Yeah, i get that they're a "different" kind of store where folks play video games and skateboard around inside, but while helpful, they're also not terribly organized. Suffice to say that after a bit of an inventory problem, a return visit, a dash of windex and a night's recharge, things were fine.
Address Sync
The next thing that's annoying is something i'm not sure i can blame on Helio. i wanted to sync my address book to my phone. There are a couple of ways to do this, but the one i wanted to use was my Y!Address book. Of course, after pulling down 251 entries, i realized that over half of them were crap, so i cleared the phone's address book and started pruning my Y!Addressbook. i then filed a few bugs against Y!Addressbook for some horribly broken stuff. Some time later, i tried to resync my Y!Address book, and got 371 entries. (251 original, plus the new batch of modified, and the phone had a bunch of duplicate records that i had previously pruned out.) A bit of frustrated cursing as well as a thankful bulk edit capability on the ocean, i've got the address book, kinda sorta sorted out.
Oh, and i found out that Y!Address book apparently handles vCards in the import/export. Gotta remember that for getting my private network built up.
Not really a browser
Helio routes everything through google, specifically, their mobilizationer or whatever that strips out stuff and makes normal pages into wap pages. There's a link on the bottom that lets you go to the real page, so that's what i tend to do.
Unfortunately, that browser doesn't do AJAX, so anything that uses that for anything is.. well… not going to work.
For the most part, stuff works fairly well, CSS renders ok (aside from things like my blog's css making the page look squished).
Another unfortunate thing is that RSS feeds go through Google Reader. While that's fine if you like google reader, i don't since it shows snippets regardless of what the content actually is. That's easy enough to fix by creating my own RSS planet page on unitedheroes.net. (Which i've been meaning to do anyway.)
J2ME apps must be signed
This is the real bummer about the helio. In order for apps to load, they've got to be signed and nobody's cracked that particular nut. Also, you can't just load your own screens and ringtones from a web page, you have to email them to yourself. A bit of a hassle, but nothing that's really a roadblock. It'd be really nice to run something like an ssh client or vnc, but apparently, no can do.
Granted, this does get back to the fact that i think the platform that wins is the most open platform you can make. Look at the trouble folks are going through to fix the shortcomings of the various things they buy and you see that there's obviously demand.
Paging
This was just weird. Now, officially, if you send an email to your account at myhelio.com, your phone is supposed to notify you. For whatever reason, that doesn't seem to work on mine right now. i'm not upset, because that's not the real mechanism that is used. Messages actually go to your phone number @messaging.sprintpcs.com (which was where my pages were going to begin with). i'm pretty sure the customer support guy i was talking to filed a bug about that, because he sounded pretty surprised that i wasn't getting the messages i should have been. The phone definitely supports IMAP and does poll accounts for messages, so i'm betting someone is probably swearing about this somewhere.
Custom Mail
For what it's worth, i'm still not able to get this to read my domains imap email box. Again, not a huge problem since there are other ways to get there from here and i figure i'll crack that particular nut eventually. Likewise, the fact that you can't email a photo from external memory means i'll be keeping an eye on the remaining 342MB, but again, i'm not really worried about hitting any particularly nasty walls on that.
So, tell me again why an Ocean?
Because it's still better than the last phones i've had (and yeah, i'll toss the treo in there too).
The parts that do work, do so very well, and the stuff that doesn't isn't so horribly broken that it bothers me too much. i'll have to do some work, but that's by choice rather than by requirement and as a base user, i wouldn't have to do much at all.
Mobile messenger rules. So does OneSearch. Having a local psuedoGPS is pretty darn handy (and i'll be pinging these guys about getting fireeagle access for this). Streaming video worked great, and was a bit of a surprise since it wasn't from YouTube.
Are there things i'd want to change? Yes. You bet. There are things i'd want to change about any phone. Spending north of $600 for a portable web browser really doesn't make sense. Eventually, i'll probably get pissed at this phone too and get a blackberry or something, but i'm hoping that by then there will really be a phone out there that's actually worth owning and doesn't try to continually siphon out your wallet.
Would i recommend a Helio?
probably. i wouldn't rush out and buy one next week. i'd be prepared for more than a few complaints, but it's better than i expected and does what i want it to. No, it's not an iPhone and won't get you the sex it may have once gotten you, but it's not a bad little brick.
Kinda sad when a choice in phones is mostly because it doesn't suck as much as the others.
I picked up an Ocean a couple of weeks ago, and it's been great for me. There are some hiccups and "why did/n't they do that?" here and there, but by and large I've found it to be a good phone, and the plan sells itself. Without limits (economic or otherwise) on bandwidth, I find myself using the crappy browser all the time, desperately searching for useful links that are designed for phones.
I went from "never heard of Helio" to full on Helion in one cranky post
Your mention of Nintendo has me wishing the big N made a mobile phone device. I'd rather have a DS-based cell than an iPod-based cell any day.
Sure, you may think that Justin, but just wait until you're late on a payment and the only way to get out of having your knees broken is to jump on a giant spiky turtle's head three times.
forget the jumping on spikey turtles, you don't really want your ring tone to be "Hey! It's-a-me, Mar-i-o!", do you?
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I ended up with a Blackberry Pearl last week for the exact same reasons more or less.