Helio Takes a Dip in The Ocean

26^th March 2007 – The alternative carrier Helio has just announced the spring availability of the Ocean, a dual-slider handset produced by Pantech. Helio and Earthlink founder Sky Dayton makes the ambitious claim that “With Ocean, Helio has changed the shape of 3G with a new kind of device - the dual slide - a design that doesn't compromise on voice, text, IM, email, surfing, and every other way you want to stay connected." More details and pictures after the jump.

The Ocean may have the chops to deliver on this ambitious claim: it has a GPS, a large 2.4-inch LCD screen and a 2-megapixel camera. There are also two speakers built into the device, and Helio claims a battery life of up to 15 hours when playing back music. Additional storage for music and video is provided through a MicroSD card socket.

It’s a dual slider device, which means that one part of the phone slides out to reveal a QWERTY keyboard, while another slides out to reveal a dial pad. This does mean that the phone is a little chunky, though: it’s a rather chunky .86 inches thick. 

These features are well matched on the software side: the Ocean comes with Google Maps, music software and an interesting sounding feature called presence detection. What this means is that when you type a name into the Ocean, it will bring up a screen that shows the phone number and the IM status of the contact, so you can quickly see if they are online. The device supports Yahoo! Messenger, AIM or Windows Live Messenger.

The 2 megapixel camera is also well supported on the software side: the Ocean includes support for Helio UP, an online video hosting service that can be used directly from the camera application. Users can even attach GPS coordinates to images. 

The Ocean will cost $295, and will be available in the spring of this year.