Helio Fin (Samsung SPH-a513) Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on August 29, 2007 Comment on this |
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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)
| 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 |
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