Helio Ocean Review - Organizer

Richard Baguley
Published on May 16, 2007 Comment on this

Synchronization (0.0)
The Helio Ocean does not support synchronization or personal information like contacts and calendars directly with your PC. There is support for over the air synchronization of your contacts, however this will be covered in the over the air PIM sync section below.

Alerts (4.0)
You can create alerts for calendar appointments on the Helio Ocean. We were pleased to see that you can set any time for the alarm to go off, however you cannot set it to go off at a different time. The Ocean has a specific menu option in the calendar application to manage how alerts are handled. In this menu you can choose the ring tone that sounds for the alert, choose from several options for vibrating alerts and also change the screen that appears when the alert goes off. As befits a phone targeted at a young and hip audience you can choose some very colorful screens, as well as more staid screens. When an alert sounds you will see the screen filled up by the visual you chose. You can only dismiss an alert, there are no options to snooze it. If you miss the alert it does not sound again. Although we like the fun extra features that you can add to your alerts and the ability to set it for any time, we found the lack of snooze options and the fact that it doesn't sound again if you miss it to be serious deficits.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
The Helio Ocean does not include fully featured synchronization of your personal information as you would find with a Blacbkerry or other smart phone using an Exchange Server. It does however support a Helio service that allows you to import you contacts to an online website and then synchronize that website with your phone. You can also synchronize your contacts with your AOL account over the air. We were pleased to see this option, but for serious business users it won't replace your Exchange Server compatible smart phone. Of course the Helio Ocean probably is targeted at those users anyways.

Personal information Management Cross Connections (0.0)
The Helio Ocean does not support cross connections between PIM applications such as the ability to invite contacts to an appointment.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (4.71)

To test how easy it is to add contacts to a phone we time how long it takes to add a name and phone number for five different sample contacts. We then take the average time for our score. The Helio Ocean took an average of 21.24 seconds to add a contact using the QWERTY keyboard. This is slower than other QWERTY devices like the Treo 700p (17.7 seconds) and T-Mobile Dash (13.44 seconds). We found that accessing the new contact dialogue was fairly quick, as the left soft key on the home screen is assigned to contacts, but for some reason the Ocean took quite awhile to save the contact to memory once we had entered the information.

Looking/Sorting/Search (7.5)
You can sort your contacts by first name or last name. There are no options to sort by business or category. You can also choose to show or hide your AOL and Yahoo contacts. We were very pleased to see that you can quickly search through your contacts by simply typing the person's name. There is also support for predictive search when using the keypad. This means that unlike the Nokia N95 you don't have to use multi tap to spell out a name. Of course you can also use the QWERTY keyboard to spell out a name. The search works for either first or last names.

Fields (5.0)

When creating a new contact the Helio Ocean provides 18 fields. In addition you can add seven additional fields by hitting the left soft key. We were very pleased to see that for each phone number listed you can assign a separate speed dial. There are also fields for Yahoo, AOL and Windows Live instant messaging, as well as a place to enter a contacts MySpace info and a notes field to enter miscellaneous information. Overall we found the fields offered very complete, especially for the younger crowd. It doesn't compare to the wide variety of fields that are available on some smart phones like the Nokia N95 or Treo 750.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (2.3)
As we pointed out above the Helio Ocean allows you to assign speed dials for any contacts phone number. Unfortunately there is no support for voice tags or voice command. Voice command has been a pretty standard feature on all phones lately so we're surprised to see its lack on the high end Ocean, although to be fair voice command rarely works well.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (4.13)
To test how easy it is to add a calendar item to a phone we time how long it takes to go from the home screen when unlocked until we have added a simple lunch appointment using the QWERTY keyboard. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Helio Ocean took an average of 24.2 seconds to add our sample calendar appointment, an extremely slow time. The Sanyo M1, a regular phone, took 16 seconds to add our sample appointment. The Treo 750, a smart phone with a QWERTY keyboard, took only 6.76 seconds on average.

The Ocean was hurt by some inconsistencies in its interface. For example, when you enter a new appointment you cannot change the date from within the new appointment interface. Instead you have to navigate using the calendar view to the date you want and then initiate a new appointment. Despite this however you are forced to scroll past the entire date before you can enter a start and end time for the appointment. The Ocean also doesn't automatically create reminders for appointment, requiring us to do this manually for our test appointment. We were disappointed by how clunky the interface was, and hope that this is updated in the future.

Calendar Views (4.13)

The Helio Ocean provides users with three different calendar views: monthly, weekly and daily. You can easily switch between these views using the right soft key. The monthly view shows you a single month with the current date indicated by a small triangle in the bottom right hand corner of the date. Days when you have appointment are highlighted in green. When you have a date highlighted with the cursor a small indicator in the lower right shows you whether there are appointments or annual events for that date. There is no information about the actual appointment however, which makes this of limited utility.

The weekly view is a little different than most phones we've seen. Instead of a grid there is a simple list of days in the week with the same indicators for appointments or annual events. In this view you do see numbers next to each indicator that show how many of each occur on that date. You also see a note at the bottom that lists the name of each event. We found this view slightly more useful than the monthly view, but still of limited utility.

The daily view shows a simple chronological list of the appointment for that day. At the bottom of the screen is a field where you can view the content of any note that is included with the appointment. Unfortunately no information about the actual time of the appointment, reminders or recurrence is included. To access that information you will need to actually open the appointment. Overall we found the calendar views on the Helio Ocean of limited utility. Even the daily view, which usually provides the most information on phones, provides very little actual information about your calendar appointments. Add in the lack of synchronization with a desktop computer and it becomes painfully obvious that the Ocean is not a serious scheduling tool.

Fields (8.0)

When creating a new calendar appointment the Helio Ocean you have an option to create an appointment at a specific time or to create recurring appointments for each day, week, month or year. You can also create what is called an annual event, which is an all day event that can be set to recur annually. Although we understand that the Ocean is probably looking to make creating recurring appointments easier with these choices, in practice we found it somewhat confusing. You can set start and end time for each appointment, as well as a title, an alarm and a note. We were pleased that alarms can be set for any time that you choose, although not for a different date. The options available are fairly good, with only location missing from the items we look for. We do wish that recurrence was more flexible, for example there is no option to set an appointment to occur only on weekdays or weekends.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The Helio Ocean does not allow you to create to-dos or tasks.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
See above.

Fields (0.0)
See above.

Notes

Adding Notes (3.11)

To test how easy it is to add a text note we time how long it takes to go from the home screen until we have added a new note reminding us about a lunch appointment. We repeat this process five times and take the average for our score. Using the QWERTY keyboard on the Helio Ocean it took us an average of 16.06 seconds to add our test note. This is slightly faster than the Nokia N95's 17.7 seconds, but significantly slower than the Treo 750's 11.65 seconds.

Note Interface (3.0)
The interface of the Helio Ocean's text notes application is very simple. Notes are organized in a simple list, with the newest note at the top. There are no options to categorize or filter your notes, nor can you search through them. The left soft key gives you access to a short menu that allows you to edit or delete the selected note, or delete all notes. Selecting a note will show you the date and time it was created, as well as the contents of the note. Anyone looking for advanced features from a notepad will be disappointed by the Ocean's options, but for those who simply want to jot down a quick note it is quite functional.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The Helio Ocean does not provide any formatting options for notes. This includes things like changing the font, font size, color or adding hand drawn items or multimedia to notes. This is not uncommon as only more advanced smart phones tend to offer options like these, and even those generally lack font formatting options.

Voice Memo (7.0)

The Helio Ocean includes a voice notes application that is listed in the plan section of the menu. You can more quickly access it by using the dedicated key located on the right side of the phone. A short press on this key will take you to the voice notes interface where you can view existing voice notes. A long press will take start a new voice recording automatically. Voice notes are limited to one hour in length, which should be more than sufficient for most users. There are no categorization or filter options for voice notes, however we were very happy to see that you can send a voice note as an MMS directly from the application. Overall we found the voice notes application fairly straightforward and we liked the ease of access provided by the dedicated key.

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