Helio Ocean Review - Software

Richard Baguley
Published on May 16, 2007 Comment on this

OS (4.5)

The Helio Ocean runs an updated version of Helio's proprietary operating system. The interface is fairly intuitive, the menu is arranged in a circle, with items taking you to sub menus arranged in lists. We liked the feature at the top level menu where the soft keys change depending on which menu item is selected, giving you quick access to commonly used features. We did have a couple of issues, for example when the phone is in the closed position you cannot access the menu. We believe this is meant to be a security feature to prevent mistaken presses, however we feel it is a little excessive given that there is already a key lock on the phone. We also found that several applications do not function in the landscape view. Overall we found the operating system well organized and fairly simple to learn and use. Also, unlike smart phone operating systems the Helio Ocean does not support multi-tasking. For example you cannot have music playing in the background while you are playing a game or surfing the web. Proprietary operating systems recieve a score between one and five. Higher scores are reserved for smart phone operating systems like Symbian or Palm OS.

Home Screen Score (4.0)

The home screen of the Helio Ocean is very simple. The majority of the screen is taken up by the wallpaper you have chosen. At the top of the screen are indicators for time, battery life, signal strength. At the bottom of the screen are two soft keys. The left one takes you to the menu while the right one takes you to your contacts. In addition you can access four applications/menus from the home screen using the four directions of the D-Pad. Up takes you to the web browser, left takes you to the music & video menu, right takes you to the games menu and down takes you to messaging. Unfortunately there is no way to change any of these key mappings. Overall we found the functionality of the home screen to be solid, with the shortcuts generally useful. We would have liked to see more options for customization however.

Extensibility (3.0)
The Helio Ocean's proprietary operating system does not allow you to install native applications like smart phone operating systems such as Windows Mobile. It does however allow you to install java applications such as Opera Mini or java games. There are a wide array of java games available, but not as many java applications that add value to the phone.

Update: As a user has noted in the comments below the Helio Ocean does not seem to be supported by Opera Mini. This is an unfortunate reality of java applications that they do not all work on all phones.

Customizability (2.5)
The Helio Ocean provides you with several customizability options. You can choose between two font types, but this does not significantly change font size. There are a wide array of wallpapers, including some with animations, for your home screen. Although these customization options are fun they don't change the basic interface of the phone. There are no options to rearrange the menus as you can on Series 60 devices, nor are their all encompassing themes that change the look and feel of the whole phone.

OS Responsiveness (6.0)
We found the interface of the Helio Ocean to be generally snappy, with menus and applications launching quickly. There are a few notable exceptions to this, for example the browser took quite awhile to launch and there was noticeable lag when adding a contact. Switching between portrait and landscape orientation is quick, although as we noted some applications do not make this switch; the buddy beacon program, for one did not switch to landscape orientation when we slid the keyboard out. We also found that the OS crashed on occasion; several times in our testing, the phone locked up, forcing us to pull the battery to restart it.

Gaming (5.33)

Gaming is a focus of Helio's business model and the Helio Ocean purports to be a solid gaming platform. The phone comes loaded with two java games, a full version of Call of Duty 2 and a demonstration version of Gameloft Mega Hits, a set of three games. Call of Duty 2 is a very full featured and fun game for those who like shoot em' ups. We also found the puzzle games in the Gameloft Mega Hits to be fun, especially the pool game, but we wish they were full versions rather than demos. We found the directional pad and controls on the Ocean to be very usable for games. Overall we found the Ocean to be a very good phone for gaming, but it won't replace your PSP anytime soon.

Browser Features (6.0)

The browser on the Helio Ocean is a basic mobile browser. It supports HTML, javascript, images and frames. Unfortunately it does not seem to support WAP pages, which is a curious oversight for a mobile browser. It does support cookies and has an auto complete feature, but does not have advanced items like Java, Flash and RSS feeds. We were disapointed by the lack of WAP support and otherwise found the browser to be fairly basic.

Browsing Interface (3.5)

The Ocean's web browser runs most web pages through Google's XHTML service. This shrinks web pages down for mobile devices and breaks the page up into multiple pages. Although it may sound helpful we found that it was clunky to use, especially when viewing large web pages. You can choose to view the full html page instead, but only after first being redirected to the XHTML page. When viewing the full web page the browser displays it as you would see it on your desktop by default. This is not practical for viewing as it takes forever to scroll around the page. You can choose to shrink it down to a single screen's width using the menu system, but we would have preferred for this to be the default option. There is a mini map that you can use, similar to that found on the Series 60 web browser. In practice however it is not very useful as it does not show what is on the page, so you're moving around blind.

History and bookmarks are each assigned their own menu item. Bookmarks cannot be arranged into folders, you can however edit existing bookmarks and move them up and down the list. The history is a simple list in chronological order of the pages you have visited. Neither the history of the bookmarks are searchable. The browser menu is divided into four sections, which you move between using left/right on the directional pad. In addition to bookmarks and history there is a view menu where you can choose options like text only, show mini map and fit to screen. There is also an image list, which is an interesting feature we haven't seen before that allows you to view the images you have seen on web pages and save them to your device.

There is also a search menu that allows you to search within the page, refresh the page and access the browser settings. Within the settings you can clear your cookies, history and cache, as well as turn the auto-complete feature on and choose between two font sizes. We should also mention that the Ocean has a nice feature that allows you to initiate a web search from the home screen. Simply begin typing a query and you will be taken to a search page where you can view results from Yahoo, Google and Wikipedia, amongst others.

Overall we found the web browser on the Ocean to have a few nice features but generally it falls well short of the best mobile web browsers out there like Opera Mini and the Series 60 web browers. When actually browsing we found it to be generally clunky, as with many other regular cell phones. We also found the browser to be very slow to launch and web pages slow to load.

Browser Access (8.0)
To test how easy it is to access the web browser we count the number of steps it takes to go from the home screen to our own website. We use steps instead of a timed test to take network performance out of the equation. Entering the url is counted as a single step. The Helio Ocean took five steps to access Wirelessinfo.com. This is a good score, less than the Nokia N95's 7 steps and the same as the Treo 750. The Ocean is helped by the shortcut on the home screen that takes you to the browser and the fact that the left soft key in the browser takes you directly to the url entry screen.

Calculator (3.0)

The calculator on the Helio Ocean is very basic. The four basic arithmetic functions (+,-,*,/) are assigned to the four directions of the D-Pad, with the center select key completing the operation. You can insert decimels with the star button and a +/- with the pound button. The calculator is easy to use and is generally similar to the basic calculators found on many other phones.

Alarm (6.0)

The Helio Ocean has two alarms. The first is called Wake-up Call, and can be used to set for Weekdays, Monday through Saturday or everyday. You can set your own ringtone, vibration alert and choose the screen that will appear. You can also choose to have it stay off on holidays and set how many times it repeats and what the interval is between repetitions. The alarm application allows you to set an alarm for 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes into the future, for a set time, or to repeat on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can also choose to skip holidays in the alarm applications, but you don't have the repitition and interval options that the Wake-up Call application has. You can only set a single Wake-up Call, but have multiple alarms. Between the two you should be set for alarms, but we are disappointed that the features available are split between two applications rather than available for all alarms.

Document Software (0.0)
The Helio Ocean does not include any software for viewing or editing office documents such as PDFs. The email program does allow you to try and view documents as text, but we found that this didn’t work on our test spreadseheets and presentation files.

Other Software (0.0)
The Ocean has a small selection of other software on offer, such as the Helio Traffic application (which shows traffic data for a selected area) and the Accuweather Premium application, which shows you the local weather, a 10-day forecast and radar maps. This application costs $3.99 a moth, though, and it doesn’t work in Landscape mode. A handful of other applications are available for download (such as the Drinktini drinks database), but these aren’t free; they typically cost $2.99 and up for 30 days of use.

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