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Helio Fin (Samsung SPH-a513) Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on August 29, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Samsung Fin's cool blue styling and ultra-slim profile make for a slim and sexy handset that is perfectly paired with Helio's focus on services for the younger set. But the Fin's attractions don't stop at styling, with a high end feature set and snappy interface under the hood. Audio quality is solid, and the 3-megapixel camera takes good photos (for a phone; it doesn't measure up against a dedicated digital camera). We also appreciated the built in IM and e-mail clients, although the Fin won't replace a BlackBerry for power e-mail users. It does a good job of integrating with Helios online services, allowing for easy uploading of photos and videos.

But the Fin has its problems: limited battery life, and a keypad and controls that are almost painful to use due to a lack of differentiation between the keys. Still, the Fin will be attractive to many Helio users, especially as it's their only flip phone and it includes nice extras like GPS functionality.

The Samsung Fin is currently available exclusively from Helio for $175 with a two-year contract, or $365 without.

Tour & Design - The Fin is a slim and sexy flip phone with a large internal screen and a small external one.

Audio Quality - The Fin did very well in our audio tests, with our only concern being slightly low side tone.

Imaging - The Fin's 3-megapixel camera generally lives up to it's specifications, producing better photos than most camera phones and even throwing in halfway decent video recording, for a phone.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Fin's calling features are fairly standard, and although we were able to dial quickly we did not find the keypad very comfortable.

Messaging - Unlike most phones, the Fin has a built in e-mail client that also handles IM and text messaging. It won't replace a true e-mail device like a BlackBerry, however.

Organizer - The Fin's organizational software is good for a standard phone, but any smart phone will provide more powerful tools.

Multimedia - The Fin's music player does a good job, but we miss the lack of external music keys. Video playback is average, hurt by a lack of support for most common formats.

Software - The Fin's interface is very responsive and easy to learn, especially for those who have already used Helio's devices.

Battery Life - Battery life on the Fin can only be called mediocre, with especially limited Web browsing performance and subpar talk time.

Connectivity - The Fin provides high speed access via Helio's EVDO network, and we appreciated the support for stereo Bluetooth headsets.

Hardware - The Fin is a well put together device, but we found the lack of differentiation and limited travel on the keypad and control keys to be extremely frustrating.

Other Features - The Fin is one of the few handsets on the market today with built-in GPS functionality, however it can't be used as a dial-up modem for your computer.

Value & Comparisons - At $175 with a two-year contract, we judge the Fin to be a good value considering everything it packs in.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
The Helio Fin looks like a tapered fin, ironically enough. Unlike most modern flip phones there isn't a large external display. Instead, you have a small LED display near the top of the front, just underneath the lens for the 3-megapixel camera. Under the display is the Samsung logo and, near the bottom, the Helio logo.

Front Open
When you open up the Fin you reveal a large 2.3-inch QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) display. Above the display is the phone speaker. When open,the lower part of the phone holds the keys and controls, which all sit on a single piece of blue plastic reminiscent of the styling found on Razr devices.

Left
The left side of the phone houses volume rocker keys near the middle, and just below these the proprietary port for data, charging, and headsets.

Top
The top of the phone houses the hinge for the flip mechanism, and one of the holes for the lanyard loop sits on the left.

Bottom
The bottom of the device houses the phone's speaker.

Right
The right side of the phone does not have any controls, but you do see the other side of the lanyard loop near the top.

Back
The upper two thirds on the back of the phone has the cover for the battery, with a release switch near the top.

Battery Out
When you remove the battery cover you reveal the battery, of course. Unfortunately there is no information available about battery capacity. Below the battery is a spring-loaded slot for Micro SD cards, which you have to remove the battery to access.

In the Box (4.0)
The Fin ships with a good selection of accessories, including a charger, data cable, and stereo headset, as well as the typical manuals. Although we would have liked to see a Micro SD card, as well, we appreciate the data cable and stereo headset as many other phones, like the LG Chocolate and Samsung Sync, don't include these accessories.

Handling (6.0)
The Helio Fin feels very comfortable in your hand. The slim design and light weight means it's easy to carry around or hold up to your head for a long phone call. Our only concern is that it is a bit long, closed and especially when opened up.

Portability (8.0)
As one of the thinnest handsets we've seen, the Helio Fin is eminently portable. It will fit easily into even tight pockets, and of course you won't have any problem finding space for it in a bag or purse.

Aesthetics (9.0)
We like the clean and smooth look of the Fin. The finish is plastic, but high quality. It looks and feels expensive. The Fin isn't a flashy handset, but it is an elegantly attractive one.

Durability (7.0)
The Fin feels very solid and well constructed, despite the slim form factor. This is a definite improvement over other Samsung handsets, like the Blast or Sync, which feel plastic and cheap. As with any flip phone, we are concerned about the Fin's hinge and how well it will hold up over time, but aside from that we saw nothing to concern us about the Fin's durability.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

Regardless of whatever other features are packed into the modern Swiss Army knife phones, they all still need to be able to make calls adequately. We used professional testing equipment and software to measure the call quality of the Helio Fin. The H.A.T.S. (Head And Torso Simulator) reproduces the human head and ear, while Soundcheck is an electro-acoustic analysis program that allows us to measure the quality of sound the phone sends and receives. For more information on how we test, see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (9.33)
The graph above shows the frequency response of sound received by the Helio Fin, meaning the voice of the person on the other end of the line during a conversation. The blue line is the Fin's performance, while the two red lines represent the limits against which we measure this performance. As you can see, the Fin generally fell within our limits, with a couple of exceptions. Sound rose just a bit over our limits at low to mid frequencies, while the sound fell off a bit faster than we would have liked at the high frequencies. In practice, neither of these deviations should have much impact on the quality of sound you hear, although high-pitched voices may sound slightly muted, while bassier voices may be slightly louder and boomier. Overall, however, voice quality received by the Fin was good. As you can see from the table below it performed better than any of the comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Helio Fin	Sanyo Katana DLX(on Sprint)	LG Chocolate VX8550(on Verizon)
Score	9.33	5.46	8.27
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N75 (unlocked, on AT&T)	Nokia N73 (on AT&T)	Sprint Upstage (on Sprint)
Score	8.73	4.47	8.34
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (8.25)
The chart above outlines the quality of sound sent by the Helio Fin, or the quality of sound the person on the other end of a call will hear. As with the previous graph, the blue line represents the Fin's performance, while the red lines represent the limits we test against. Performance was good, with our only concern being that sound fell of a little too quickly at higher frequencies. This may make your voice sound a little clipped and difficult for the other person to hear, but this is a relatively minor problem. We were pretty pleased with the Fin's score in this test, as the table below shows it is again better than any of its competitors; only the new LG Chocolate came close.

Cell Phone	Helio Fin	Sanyo Katana DLX (on Sprint)	LG Chocolate VX8550 (on Verizon)
Score	8.25	7.80	8.06
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N75 (unlocked, on AT&T)	Nokia N73 (on AT&T)	Sprint Upstage (on Sprint)
Score	7.57	6.22	7.36
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (6.75)
Side tone is the small amount of your voice piped back into your speaker so you can judge how loud your voice is. The Fin's side tone was a little lower than we would have liked at -21.25 decibels. This means your voice sounds quieter to you than it actually is, so you may speak louder on calls than is optimum. As you can see from the chart below, the Fin's side tone performance was not as good as its send or receive performance, but only by a few decibels, so it won't likely be a huge problem.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
Helio Fin	21.25	6.75
Sanyo Katana DLX	20.23	7.77
LG Chocolate VX8550	17.85	9.85
Nokia N75	14.85	6.85
Nokia N73	21.55	6.45
Sprint Upstage	21.90	6.10

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.77)
To test the resolution of the Fin's 3-megapixel camera we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run the results through the Imatest software. This produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), which is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Helio Fin's camera scored 790.1 lw/ph horizontal and 866.5 lw/ph vertical. As the chart below shows, this is significantly better than most comparison phones, beat out only by the Nokia N73's excellent 3.2-megapixel auto focus camera. For a camera phone we were generally happy with the Fin's performance in this test, but you should note that it won't replace even a cheap stand alone digital camera.

Cell Phone	Helio Fin	Sanyo Katana DLX	LG Chocolate VX8550
Score	2.77	0.45	1.69
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	790.1 / 866.5	316.6 / 249.4	616.8 / 569.5
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N75	Nokia N73	Sprint Upstage
Score	1.14	3.98	1.94
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	505.9 / 698.8	946.4 / 1126	678.9 / 547.1
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (5.94)
To test how well the Fin's camera reproduced colors we took photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart and ran the photos through Imatest. Imatest compares the produced colors with the original colors and produces the chart below on the left. The innermost rectangle shows the original color from the chart, the box outside the rectangle shows Imatest's adjusted color, and the outer box shows the captured colors.


Imatest also produces the chart above on the right, which marks the ideal color with a box and the actual captured color with a circle. The longer the line between the two, the more inaccurate the color capture. As you can see, the Fin's camera did a reasonable job of reproducing colors. There is some inaccuracy across the board, with the worst offenders being oversaturated yellows, but nothing nearly as bad as phones like the Sprint Upstage or Nokia N75, whose colors were off significantly. We were generally pleased with the Fin's ability to accurately reproduce colors.

Cell Phone	Helio Fin	Sanyo Katana DLX	LG Chocolate VX8550
Score	5.94	6.54	4.69
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia N75	Nokia N73	Sprint Upstage
Score	3.47	5.88	3.85
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.46)
To test the amount of noise produced by the Fin's camera we took photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then ran the photos through the Imatest software. The Fin produced slightly higher than optimal levels of noise, but the consistency across lighting levels made up for this. As seen in the chart below, it did better than any of our comparison phones, just beating the Sprint Upstage.

Cell Phone	Score
Helio Fin	1.46
Sanyo Katana DLX	0.83
LG Chocolate VX8550	1.27
Nokia N75	0.41
Nokia N73	1.17
Sprint Upstage	1.45

Live Preview (7.0)
The Helio Fin's screen does a good job of providing a preview of the photo you're about to take. Colors are reproduced accurately and there is no pixelation. The live preview refreshes quickly, and we saw no "ghost" effect when we panned the camera around.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (0.0)
We test how quickly we can go from phone closed to taking a photo. We repeat this test until we get a consistently repeatable result. The Fin took 6.2 seconds to complete this process. This is a poor time, despite the fact we were able to use the camera shortcut key to quickly launch the application. The camera application is one of the few to take a significant amount of time to launch, although once it was launched we were able to take a photo fairly quickly. As you can see below, the Fin put up the worst time among our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	6.2	3.23
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.1	6.45
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.36	8.47
Nokia N75	4.7	4.26
Nokia N73	5.3	3.77
Sprint Upstage	2.7	7.41

Shot to Shot Time (0.57)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly we can take a series of photos. When possible we try to use Burst mode, however the Fin lacks this function so we had to take photos manually, which severely slowed us down. We were able to capture five photos in 26.5 seconds. This works out to .19 frames per second (fps), a terrible score. We were hampered by the fact that there is no way to turn off the photo review that occurs after you take each photo, and because it took a significant amount of time to save each photo. This poor performance means anyone hoping to take an action shot with the Fin will probably be disappointed with the results.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Helio Fin	0.19	0.57
Sanyo Katana DLX	2.10	6.30
LG Chocolate VX8550	0.38	1.14
Nokia N75	0.43	1.29
Nokia N73	0.52	1.56
Sprint Upstage	0.20	0.60

Shutter to Shot Time (3.33)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes for the camera to actually capture a photo once you have depressed the capture button. We repeat this test until we get a consistently repeatable result. The Fin's shutter to shot time was 0.6 seconds. While this isn't good, it could be worse. The Nokie N73, for example, took 3.1 seconds, although it should be noted that it has an auto focus camera that takes time to  focus before the photo is captured. Compared to the other phones, the Fin's time was slower than the Katana, Chocolate, and Upstage, but slightly better than the Nokia N75's.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	0.60	3.33
Sanyo Katana DLX	0.38	5.26
LG Chocolate VX8550	0.22	9.09
Nokia N75	0.73	2.74
Nokia N73	3.10	0.65
Sprint Upstage	0.30	6.67

Interface (8.0)
The Fin's photo interface is well designed, with the option of four different viewing types. We prefer the option that lets us use the entire screen as a viewfinder. Most views provide you with icons showing your current photo settings, as well as convenient markers that indicate which keypad shortcuts allow you to change each setting. The left soft key opens a menu for additional settings, with a nice camera-like interface reminiscent of the one we've seen on some HTC phones. In this menu, you can move between a series of icons along the bottom using the left and right buttons, with the related settings appearing on the screen above it. All in all we were very pleased with the camera interface of the Fin.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The Fin's album software is fairly straightforward. When in the "Snap" menu you can choose to view either an internal or external album. When you select one, you are shown a list of folders. A single Default folder is automatically created, but you can create more to better organize your photos. Once you open a folder, the photos/videos stored inside are organized into a 3 x 3 thumbnail view. The left soft key is assigned to "check," which allows you to select multiple photos for moving or deletion. The left soft key opens a menu to access various functions. There is also a fairly advanced slide show feature, which allows you to build a slide show by inserting photos into the order you want and adding effects. The slide show interface is a little complicated, but we appreciate the additional functionality. Overall, the album software on the Fin is a step above what you will find on most phones, although not as advanced as that found on smart phones like the Nokia N75 or N73.

Manual Control (0.0)
The Fin does not include any manual settings for functions like scenes, aperture priority, or white balance.

Zoom (0.0)
The Fin has a digital zoom, however it is not available at the highest resolution setting. We don't award points to phones that can't use their zoom at all resolutions.

Focus (0.0)
The Fin's camera is fixed focus, commonly used on most cell phones. This means what you see is what you get as far as photo focus goes. Some more advanced camera phones like the Nokia N73 have an auto focus lens takes sharper shots, although it slows down the process of taking a photo. We do not award points for a fixed focus lens.

Flash (0.0)
The Fin does not include a flash. Most phones include at least an LED light, but with the Fin, you'll need to use a torch if there isn't enough light to capture the subject.

Metering (6.0)
The Fin has manual brightness settings, but it is also one of a handful of new phones we've seen with true metering controls. Metering allows you to control from which point or points in the scene lighting is judged. The Fin includes two metering options, center-spot metering and center-weighted metering.

White Balance (2.0)
Like most phones, the Fin has a few preset options for white balance, including Daylight, Cloudy, Incandescent, and Fluorescent. There is no support for the more advanced evaluative metering, which tries to set white balance using a "true" white card.

Image Handling (0.0)
Unlike most phones that offer few image handling options, the Fin has a whole menu of editing options in its "Photo Studio". This includes fun stuff, like applying effects and adding "stickers," but also includes more advanced options like adjusting contrast, brightness, and hue, as well as resizing and rotating photos. All in all this is an impressive selection of image handling options, almost as good as what we see on the Nokia N75 and N73, smart phones with slightly better image handling options.

Video

Overall Video Score (5.0)
The quality of video captured by the Helio Fin was quite good, for a cell phone. Video capture is at a maximum resolution of 240 x 320 at 14 fps. It's a little fuzzy, especially when viewed at full screen resolution, but unlike a lot of mobile video is not overpixelated. The quality should be more than sufficient for MMS, and you can probably even throw a movie taken by the Fin up on YouTube.

Video Resolution (4.66)
To test video resolution we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for the still resolution test. We then run frames from the video through Imatest to produce the same line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which indicates how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned. The Helio Fin did fairly well in this test, scoring 214.1 lw/ph horizontal and 217.7 lw/ph vertical. This is better than any of our comparison phones except for the Nokia N73 and N75. Nokia has a reputation for making phones with good video capture, so it's not surprising that the Fin doesn't match their quality.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Helio Fin	214.1 / 217.7	4.66
Sanyo Katana DLX	200.5 / 181.2	3.63
LG Chocolate VX8550	218.3 / 200.8	4.38
Nokia N75	307.1 / 346.3	10.97
Nokia N73	272.5 / 224.8	6.13
Sprint Upstage	77.11 / 109.5	0.84

Video Compression (2.0)
The Fin only captures video in a variant of the 3GP standard for mobile video. Other popular formats like MPEG-4 are not supported.

Interface (8.0)
The video camera interface on the Fin is very similar to the still camera interface. You have a choice of views, with indicators along the top and right of the screen for various settings. When you launch the menu it appears in a strip at the bottom of the screen, with the specific settings for the selected item appearing in a small pop up above the strip. All in all it's very camera-like and easy to use.

Manual Control (0.0)
As with the still camera there are no manual controls for the Fin's video camera.

Zoom (1.0)
The Fin offers a digital zoom on its video camera, which is available at the highest resolution setting, unlike the still camera. As always, we are not very impressed by digital zoom, which simply crops and enlarges what you are seeing, but since it's occasionally helpful we award a point for it.

Editing (0.0)
The only editing option available is to rename the video. We don't consider this sufficient to award any points, so the Fin receives a zero here.

Modes (3.0)
Video capture on the Fin doesn't include presets for MMS or e-mail, however you do have preset white balance settings and metering options similar to the still camera.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (5.49)
To test how easy it is to dial a number on the Helio Fin we timed how long it took to dial each one of five different test numbers. We started with the phone closed and unlocked and took the average time for our score. The Fin took an average of 3.64 seconds to dial a number in our test. This is slower than we would have liked. As you can see from the chart below, it's slower than most of the comparison phones. We found dialing on the Fin was made difficult by the fact that there are no dividers between any of the keys or buttons on the phone. This mean we needed to be looking at the keypad to make sure we were dialing correctly, and if our finger slipped a little there was nothing to keep us from mistakenly hitting another key.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	3.64	5.49
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.76	5.32
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.96	6.76
Nokia N75	3.34	5.99
Nokia N73	3.26	6.13
Sprint Upstage	3.38	5.92

Talk and End Buttons (3.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Fin are located above the keypad and below the directional pad, flanking the back key. The buttons are large, however we found these keys suffer from the same problem as every other key on the Fin. There is nothing that differentiates the keys from the surrounding ones. This can lead to a lot of errors, especially if you try to use the keys without looking. We also found there was very little tactile feedback or play when the buttons were pressed. We prefer the send and end keys on phones like the LG Chocolate or Upstage, which provide much better differentiation from surrounding keys.

Call Management (5.0)
The call management features on the Helio Fin are a little lacking. Hitting the call key from the home screen will take show your entire history, which includes text messages and calls. Using the left and right buttons allow you to switch between views, including missed calls, ignored calls, and messages. It's a little strange that there's no option to only view missed, incoming, or outgoing calls, as this is fairly standard on phones. You can call a number from the list by hitting the send key when it is highlighted, you can also delete individual records or all of them. Hitting the center select button when an item is highlighted will show you the time, date, and duration of the call.

You can also access a call history by going into the contact application and selecting call log from the menu. Here you can see incoming, outgoing, and missed calls, as well as a call timer. Unfortunately there is no data tracker available, although as Helio only offers unlimited data plans this probably isn't necessary. We found the presence of multiple call history locations to be a little annoying.

During a call the top of the screen displays the time the call was placed and ongoing call duration. The right soft key allows you to mute the call, while the left soft key opens a menu. This menu allows you to make your microphone louder and turn the speaker phone on, amongst other options. Although the ability to turn up your microphone is a nice feature we haven't seen on other phones, there's nothing else particularly special here.

Startup to Call (3.55)
To test how quickly it takes the phone to start up and make a call we time this process for the same five test numbers we used pin earlier tests. The Fin took an average of 28.18 seconds to start up and make a call. This is not a great time, slower than the Katana DLX and Chocolate VX8550. It is, however, faster than the N73 and N75, both of which are smart phones and thus generally take longer to start up then phones like the Fin.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	28.18	3.55
Sanyo Katana DLX	24.26	4.12
LG Chocolate VX8550	22.37	4.47
Nokia N75	40.56	2.47
Nokia N73	36.7	2.72
Sprint Upstage	28.9	3.46

Ring Volume (8.56)
To test ring volume we set the phone's volume to maximum and measure the loudest ringtone using a sound pressure meter from about four inches away. The Fin's ring volume measures 85.6 decibels, which as you can see from the chart below is about the same as most of our comparison handsets. In practice the Helio's ring volume is plenty loud, and a large selection of built-in ringtones that range from modest to obnoxious ensures you will be able to find a ringtone that fits your needs.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Helio Fin	85.6	8.56
Sanyo Katana DLX	85.7	8.57
LG Chocolate VX8550	85.4	8.54
Nokia N75	85.3	8.53
Nokia N73	85.3	8.53
Sprint Upstage	81.0	8.10

Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
Unfortunately, the Helio Fin does not allow you to use your own music files as ring tones. Instead, you will have to purchase new ringtones directly from them.

Non Audio Alerts (4.0)
The Helio Fin has a vibrate alert that can be used instead of or in conjunction with a ringtone to alert you of incoming calls. Unfortunately, the vibrate alert on the Fin is not very good; we were barely able to feel it in a pocket and chances are it will go missed in a jacket or bag. You should not depend on the vibrate alert if you're waiting for an important call. The external screen also displays information about incoming calls, but given how small the screen is this can also be easy to miss.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported E-mail Services (8.0)
By default when you enter the e-mail program on the Helio Fin you are given the choice to access a variety of popular third party e-mail systems, including Yahoo!, Windows Live/Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, and Earthlink. Setting up any of these accounts is an easy process, done by simply entering your username and password. You can also set up Helio Mail and add any POP3 or IMAP4 account. We were happy to see support for such a wide range of e-mail services on the Fin.

Push E-mail (0.0)
The Helio Fin does not support any type of push e-mail service like BlackBerry or Microsoft Exchange Activesync. Helio is testing a service that will allow its Ocean phone to work with Exchange servers for a monthly fee: see here. It isn't clear at the moment if it is planning to allow other phones to use this service, too.

Multiple E-mail Accounts (5.0)
The Fin does allow you to check multiple accounts, up to and exceeding the five accounts we test for.

HTML and Attachments (0.0)
The Helio Fin is not capable of properly displaying HTML-encoded e-mail. Although attachments do show up on incoming mail, there is no support for viewing common file types like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. You are able to download and save attachments, and you have the option to view some attachments in plain text format. We were able to do this for Word, Powerpoint, and PDF attachments, but obviously none of the document's original formatting is saved. This might be useful if you absolutely have to view the contents of an attachment, but is otherwise useless.

E-mail Customizations (2.0)
The Helio Fin's e-mail program does not provide many e-mail customization options. You can't change viewing or composing font size or type. You also can't change how e-mails are viewed in a list, for example the height of each e-mail listed or how much of the text is displayed. You can, however, create signatures for outgoing e-mails.

Time to a New Message (9.8)
To test how easy it is to create a new e-mail message we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have a new e-mail message on the screen. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Helio Fin took only 2.04 seconds to get a new e-mail started. This is an excellent time, easily beating out the Nokia N75, N73, and Sanyo Katana DLX. In fact, the Fin is as fast or faster than many e-mail-focused smart phones we've seen, like the BlackBerry 8800 and Treo 750. The Fin was helped by the fact you can quickly access the messaging application by pressing down on the directional pad on the home screen.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	2.04	9.80
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.88	5.15
LG Chocolate VX8550	n/a - no email client	0.00
Nokia N75	7.02	2.85
Nokia N73	5.20	3.85
Sprint Upstage	n/a - no email client	0.00

E-mail Usability (3.5)
E-mail on the Fin is integrated into a universal messaging interface that includes IM, text, and multimedia messaging. Each email account is listed in the messaging application, and selecting one of these will take you to its inbox. You can scroll through messages using the up and down buttons on the directional pad. If the account is associated with an IM service you will need to switch to the e-mail tab, another indication that e-mail is not necessarily the Fin's focus. The right soft key is assigned to the delete command, while the left soft key opens a menu where you can view the accounts folders, reply to the selected message, access settings, and other functions. The e-mail program is nowhere near as usable as those found on Windows Mobile or BlackBerry smart phones, but given that the Fin is not a smart phone it does a reasonable job. It compares much better to other regular phones with e-mail clients, such as the Sanyo Katana DLX.

Supported IM Services (6.0)
Like all of Helio's phones, the Fin is meant to provide instant messaging access to a variety of services, including Yahoo!, AOL, and MSN. Unfortunately there is no support for Google Talk. Helio phones put us in an interesting position in regards to scoring because of its limited pricing options. The Helio Fin uses an SMS gateway to send and receive instant messages, which can get extremely expensive if you aren't subscribed to its All In plan. If you are subscribed to its a la carte plan, you are charged 10 cents for each instant message sent or received, which can get very expensive very quickly.

Helio doesn't allow you to subscribe to a data plan without text messaging, instead its All In plan includes unlimited everything, which means you wouldn't be charged extra for sending instant messages. Thus, there isn't a scenario where you have a data plan but are still charged for instant messages as text messages, which is the scenario we're concerned about. As such we've decided to award the Fin full points here, but watch out if you decide to go with their a la carte plan; a few instant messaging sessions and you'll end up with a big bill.

MMS Support (8.0)
MMS messaging on the Fin is handled by the same messaging client that handles e-mail and IM. We were happy to see that instead of having two different interfaces for text and MMS messages there is instead a single unified interface, so you can add a media item to any text message to easily turn it into an MMS. MMS is also well integrated into the camera and album software.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (2.0)
The Fin does not graphically interpret smiley faces in text messages, however it does allow you to insert smileys into outgoing text messages.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
SMS and MMS messages sent to the Fin arrive to the same inbox, which is a simple list of incoming messages in chronological order. Like the e-mail interface, the right soft key is assigned to delete while the left one opens a menu where you can access additional functions. When you are viewing a message the left soft key allows you to quickly respond. Unfortunately, there is no support for threaded messaging, which allows you to view your messages in conversation format like in an IM. There is also a shortcut in the messaging program to create a new SMS/MMS message, which is simple and straightforward to use. As we mentioned above, we especially appreciate that text and multimedia messages aren't separated, instead remaining linked in one interface.

Time to a New SMS Message (2.94)
To test how easy it is to create a new text message on the Helio Fin we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have a new text message dialogue up. We were disappointed that the Fin took an average of 3.4 seconds to complete this process. This is significantly slower than creating a new e-mail message, which is basically the same operation except you actually need an additional button press when creating a new e-mail. The reason for this slower time is because the Fin took a long time to actually launch the new text message interface after we requested it. The Fin's performance in this test is poor compared to its competitors, and this may be a problem for serious texters.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	3.40	2.94
Sanyo Katana DLX	0.94	10.64
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.61	3.83
Nokia N75	1.84	5.43
Nokia N73	4.28	2.34
Sprint Upstage	1.70	5.88

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
By default the Helio Fin does not support synchronization of the phone's calendar and contacts with a computer. Helio does provide such software as a free download here, however we only award points for features or software that come packaged with the phone.

We did attempt to download and install the synchronization software so we could give you an overview, however the software couldn't recognize the Fin, even after repeated attempts.

Alerts (4.0)
The Helio Fin allows you to set alerts for calendar appointments and to-do items. Alerts can be set to go off one day, three days, or seven days before the scheduled time, which is less flexible then we would have liked. This makes the Fin a less flexible notification device than many other phones, including the Nokia N75 and the Katana DLX. We did appreciate the flexibility provided for the alert tone however. You can have it go off as a vibration alert, a tone, or both. You can also choose what type of tone goes off, with any ringtone loaded on the device as your option. When an alert goes off the screen is filled with the appointment information. Any key press dismisses the event, and there is no option to snooze it so it will go off later.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
Like other Helio phones, the Fin can make use of a service that allows you to back up and synchronize your contacts over the air. Although a nice option, business users will be disappointed by lack of over-the-air synchronization with an Exchange server.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (4.54)
To test how easy it is to add contacts to the Fin we timed how long it took to add a contact name and phone number from phone closed. We repeat the test for five different contacts and take the average for our score. The Fin took an average of 22.02 seconds to add a contact name and number. This is similar to our comparison phones, however it needs to be mentioned that we found the Fin's keypad difficult to use, as it lacks dividers to differentiate keys. Still, as the results indicate, this didn't slow us down too much.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	22.02	4.54
Sanyo Katana DLX	23.36	4.28
LG Chocolate VX8550	20.50	4.88
Nokia N75	22.84	4.38
Nokia N73	23.10	4.33
Sprint Upstage	21.30	4.69

Looking/Sorting/Search (1.5)
The contacts application on the Helio Fin is very simple, providing an alphabetical list of your contacts but no way to sort them by any other criteria. When a contact is selected the mobile phone is the default, however you can switch between other phone numbers or e-mail addresses using the left and right keys. The search functionality is via multi-tap, but we were happy to see it searches all parts of a contact's name. For example, to search for a contact named Alberto Juarez, it would appear as a match if you only typed in "jua." This is an improvement over some phones that only allow you to search by the first name, starting with the first letter, like the Katana DLX. Despite this feature, the sorting and searching options provided by the Fin are extremely basic. We would have liked to see predictive search, and the ability to sort by groups would have been nice.

Fields (2.8)
The Helio Fin provides a good selection of fields for contacts, albeit not as many as a smart phone like the Nokia N75. There are 14 fields available, including space for four phone numbers, birthdays, and a notes field where you can enter any information you want. As you would expect from phones nowadays, you can also add a photo to the contact.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (3.0)
The Helio Fin supports speed dial, with each phone number containing a corresponding field where you can assign a speed dial from 2 to 99. Voice dialing is also supported, but didn't work very well. Of the five diverse names we assign our test contacts, the voice command software was only able to recognize one. We've rarely been impressed by voice command software, and the Fin isn't going to change that. Unfortunately the Fin doesn't support voice tags, which means you can't train the phone to recognize your contact names.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (7.09)
To test how easy it is to add a calendar item we time how long it takes to go from phone closed to having a complete lunch appointment for the following day. The Fin took an average of 14.1 seconds to add our test appointment. This is a reasonably fast time, although it's not as fast as the Chocolate VX8550. The calendar is buried in the menu system, but by using keyboard shortcuts we were able to launch it fairly quickly. We were also helped by the fact that if there are no appointments on a given day, selecting the day and activating it will take you directly to a new appointment interface.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	14.10	7.09
Sanyo Katana DLX	15.22	6.57
LG Chocolate VX8550	6.48	15.43
Nokia N75	19.20	5.21
Nokia N73	18.96	5.27
Sprint Upstage	26.46	3.78

Calendar Views (3.0)
The Helio Fin's calendar provides three different views: monthly, weekly, and daily. The monthly view is the default when you open the program, and shows you the current month with the current day outlined in red. Days that have appointments have a small blue indicator in the upper left hand. At the bottom of the screen are three counters that show you how many of the three different appointment types appear in the selected day. The month view isn't very useful for anything but getting an overview of your schedule. The weekly view is the typical grid, with days along the top and hours along the left. Appointments are shown blocked during the time indicated. Unfortunately, just like the monthly view, the only information you get is a count of the type of appointments, which seems somewhat of a waste for a weekly view. We would have much preferred seeing a window that shows you details about the currently highlighted appointment.

Monthly	Weekly	Daily

This leaves the daily view, which is a simple chronological list of the appointments occurring that day. When an appointment is selected you see the time, title, and indicators for functions like an alert. This view provides the most information, and most users will probably use it the most. The Fin doesn't allow you to sort or filter appointments by category or group. We were unimpressed by the Fin's calendar; anyone who needs a useful scheduling tool will find the Fin's built-in calendar is useless.

Fields (5.5)
When you create a new appointment on the Fin you get a fairly basic selection of fields including title, start/end, and reminder. We were also pleased to see you can set recurrence, with a choice between weekly, monthly, and yearly. Unfortunately there's no way to set recurrence for daily, weekdays, or weekend. There's also the ability to assign one of several different icons to the appointment, which works a little like a categorization feature, although some of the icons are a little obscure. We're not sure what the rabbit or monkey heads are supposed to refer to. The alarm feature is a little strange, too. You can set the alarm to go off at a specified time one day, three days, or seven days before the event. You can also choose an "anniversary" option, which allows you to set the alarm to go off the day of the appointment; not particularly useful if you've forgotten your wedding anniversary or an important birthday and you only get a reminder on the day itself. We did, however, appreciate the flexibility to set whatever time we want on the given day for the alert to go off.

To Do/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (8.64)
To test how easy it is to add a task we time how long it takes to go from phone closed to adding a new task reminding us to pick up groceries. We repeat the test five times and take the average time for our score. The Fin took an average of 11.58 seconds to add a task. This is a very good time. As with the calendar test, we took advantage of keyboard shortcuts in the menu to improve our speed, and the Fin's excellent response time made this very easy to do.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	11.58	8.64
Sanyo Katana DLX	17.96	5.57
LG Chocolate VX8550	n/a - no tasks	0.00
Nokia N75	14.36	6.96
Nokia N73	13.16	7.60
Sprint Upstage	28.28	3.54

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (3.5)
By default your tasks are sorted by priority, and each task can be assigned to either low, normal, or high priority. You can change this to sort by due date by hitting the left soft key and choosing the appropriate option from the menu. There is no support for categories, so you can't filter by category, either.

Fields (4.5)
When you create a new task on the Fin you have only a few basic options. You can set a title, priority, due date, and alarm. One item to note is that the Fin allows you to set an alarm for any time to go off either today, one day before, three days before, or seven days before. You can also choose from ringer/vibration settings and any ringtone for each individual task. We appreciate this flexibility; it's something we don't even see from some smart phones like the Nokia N75 or N73.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.27)
To find out how easy it is to add a note to the Fin we time how long it takes to go from the unlocked home screen to adding a note reminding us about a lunch appointment. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The fin took an average of 15.3 seconds to add a note. This is an average time, and the table below shows most of our comparison phones getting a similar time. We did find one small quirk with typing on the Fin caused us some trouble. With most phones, a long press on any number key will insert that number, even if you are in T9 or ABC mode. On the Fin this didn't work, which meant when we entered "12pm" in our test note we had to switch between entry modes.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	15.30	3.27
Sanyo Katana DLX	n/a - no notes	0.00
LG Chocolate VX8550	13.73	3.64
Nokia N75	15.52	3.22
Nokia N73	15.12	3.31
Sprint Upstage	29.72	1.68

Note Interface (3.0)
The notes interface on the Fin is very basic. You have a chronological list of notes, with the newest notes at the bottom. You can't categorize, sort, or filter your notes. The left soft key opens a menu where you can access various features, including the ability to delete the currently selected note or all notes. You can also search your notes, however the search function is a little quirky. It will only match terms starting with the first word of the note, so for example if you have a note that says "Lunch 12pm tomorrow," you can find it by entering "Lunch" or "Lunch 12pm," but not if you only enter "tomorrow." This isn't as good as the search functionality found on the Chocolate VX8550, which allows you to search for any term or fragment of a term in a note.

Note Formatting (0.0)
You don't have any options for formatting your notes. You can't change the font type, size, or style, nor can you add media items to notes. One kind of fun feature included is the ability to set a background for notes. You can choose from 20 different backgrounds, or leave it blank. Although not very useful, it does add a bit of flair to an otherwise bland program.

Voice Memo (5.0)
The voice memo program on the Fin is found under Voice Functions in the Plan section of the menu. You can also access it by pressing and holding the left soft key when on the home screen. This brings up a quick access menu where the first item is assigned to voice functions. The voice memo program has two sections, one to record new messages and another to review already recorded messages. The voice recorder is very simple, you use the directional pad to control functions, with a press up starting recording and a press down to stop it.

Once you have recorded an item you are asked to review it, re-record it, or save it. Once an item has been saved it is listed in your memobox. Items are organized in the order they were recorded. The left soft key gives you access to a menu where you can rename, delete, play, or send items via e-mail. The voice memo system works fairly well, but is a little buried in the menus, and you can't record when the phone is closed. This may be a problem for those who need quick and frequent access.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (5.03)
To find out how easy it is to get a song playing on the Fin we time how long it takes to go from phone closed to getting a song playing. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Fin took an average of 3.98 seconds to get a song playing. This is about average for a phone; not as fast as the Chocolate VX8550, but also not nearly as bad as the Katana DLX. We found we could quickly get a song playing on the Fin by opening the phone and using a long press on the dedicated music key. This launches the music player with the last song you were listening to, and automatically begins playing. This is in contrast to a short press on the key, which instead takes you to your lists of music.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	3.98	5.03
Sanyo Katana DLX	11.86	1.69
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.04	9.80
Nokia N75	4.04	4.95
Nokia N73	4.34	4.61
Sprint Upstage	6.54	3.06

Dedicated Music Controls (4.0)
The Helio Fin has only two music control buttons. As you would expect the volume keys on the left side of the phone control music playback volume. In addition there is a dedicated key to the left of the directional pad that launches the music player. Unlike many modern music flip phones like the Nokia N75, the Fin eschews exterior music controls.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (9.0)
The Helio Fin's music software does a solid job of fulfilling its functions. Our standard .pls playlist file was recognized, and the phone also allows you to build your own playlists on the device. The phone was able to recognize tags for both our test MP3 and AAC files. There is no search functionality built into the phone, however you can easily sort music by title, genre, artist, and album. There are also options to view your most recently played songs, which is a nice feature we haven't seen on other phones. You switch between these different views using left and right on the directional pad.

The Fin doesn't support album art, although you do have a choice of various visual effects displayed while music is playing. Music placed in the correct folder on your memory card is automatically recognized by the music player, but there is no ability to discover music in other locations like Series 60 devices do. There also isn't support for background play; you can't start a song playing and then go check your e-mail. There is also no equalizer support. We were missing some advanced functions, especially multi-tasking support, but otherwise felt the Fin's music software did a reasonable job.

Online Song Downloading (7.0)
The Helio Fin supports Helio's music store, which can be accessed via the browser home screen. Songs can be easily searched for and are quickly downloaded to your handset. Purchased songs are protected by DRM, so they won't work on any other device. Songs typically cost $1.99 per track, which is a bit much considering most songs can be purchased online for 99 cents a track or less. Sprint Wireless has recently lowered its prices to this standard, and we hope Helio and other carriers soon follow.

Streaming (0.0)
The Flip does not support streaming music via MP3, Real, or Windows Media formats.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Helio Flip does not have any software to download or organize podcasts.

Music Sync with PC (0.0)
The Helio Fin does not support synchronization of music between your device and a PC. Helio provides some music management software on its website, but this doesn't work with the Fin.

Music Formats and DRM (0.0)
The Helio Fin supports AAC and MP3 music files. The only form of DRM supported is Helio's own, which means you won't be able to use music purchased from iTunes, Rhapsody, or Napster on the device. Thankfully DRM free music looks like it may be in our future, so hopefully we won't have to worry about this for much longer.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The Helio Fin did a good job handling an incoming call while music was playing. The music was stopped, albeit a little abruptly, when the ringtone starts, and starts up again from the same point when the call ends.

Video

Video Software Access (4.76)
To test how easy it is to get a video playing we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until a video is playing on the phone. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Fin took an average of 4.2 seconds to get a video playing. This is a fairly good time, and only the Chocolate VX8550 was faster. In most cases the Fin was significantly faster than other phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Helio Fin	4.20	4.76