Helio review roundup

We've managed to stop opening and closing our Kickflip just long enough to put together a compilation of Helio reviews for you to sift through. Helio is looking to outfit beautiful people with beautiful phones -- or, at least, one beautiful phone and one atrocious phone -- and they appear to be off to a strong start if their freshman effort is any indication. The Kickflip and its homely step-sister, the Hero, are not the most feature-rich phones on the market, but Helio is bringing an interesting hodgepodge of extras to the table to appeal to a certain demographic, as MVNOs tend to do. Tight MySpace integration on Helio's network should give you a good idea of who they're shooting for. Without further ado, here's a list of reviews to get you started -- please contribute more in the comments as you find them.

Read - Kickflip, PC Magazine
Read - Hero, PC Magazine
Read - Hero, hel.io
Read - Kickflip, Phone Scoop

[PEZ Posted May 24th 2006 6:18PM]

Gee, from what I understand, and what Ive read, and seen, it has a ton of features. Are you sure you even used the thing? It dosnt have bluetooth.. wow. Thats about it.

[(Unverified) Posted May 24th 2006 6:37PM]

A damn shame, the Kickflip review. Why doesn't this phone have bluetooth? Why as this phone released as a buggy mess? Why the "walled garden" internet experience, with no way to access the regular internets? It's an otherwise beautiful phone that I would love to own, but not the way it is. It seems nowadays that the beautiful phones skimp on features while the fugly ones have it all. Fat chicks gotta try harder, I guess.

[(Unverified) Posted May 24th 2006 8:47PM]

Helio will fail if they insist on charging this much for phones targeted at the MySpace crowd. If they offered bluetooth and laptop tethering, they might appeal a more affluent market that could keep them afloat. I'd have expected a better business plan from the Scientologists. ;)

[(Unverified) Posted May 25th 2006 11:30PM]

Does anyone know if these cellular phones are available in United States?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 6th 2006 10:41PM]

When I first discovered Helio, it seemed like a great deal. For over a year, I've wanted a phone that works as an all-in-one communication device, offering fast voice and data and a simple, affordable, all-inclusive plan.

But despite Helio's interest in appealing to my generation, and their obsession with sleakness (as far as I can see from their website) there are some MAJOR drawbacks to using this service.

First and foremost, they only offer two phones, and neither supports bluetooth. This is absolutely inexcusable. Whoever designed these phones must be an idiot for failing to incorporate a popular industry standard in any of their devices.

One of the great things about 3G is the capability of high-speed data transfer, but in my opinion, 3G speeds are useless if a carrier doesn't allow customers to use a phone as a wireless modem. What's more, failure to offer a full web browser is very limiting -- at this point, it seems that helio customers can only visit web sites that were designed to be viewed from a mobile phone.

If you travel internationally, avoid these phones. GSM is the world standard, and many countries (especially Western Europe) have no CDMA networks, making this device useless in many overseas markets.

Helio also offers very little technical information on their website, making no references to CDMA or other wireless technologies, as far as I can tell. Slickness and simplicity are important, but detailed technical information should be easily available online.

As frustrating as it is, I'd avoid this service and wait for Cingular to roll out it's 3G/UMTS network. Or, if you're not an international traveler you could go with Verizon or Sprint, which offer many more phone options and do (as far as I know) support bluetooth and phone-as-modem.

I wish Helio would get with the program. They've gotten very close to providing a great service, but they've overlooked some very important issues. Hopefully they will soon be resolved. If not, I guess I'll just have to wait until my carrier (Cingular) rolls out broadband connect in my area.