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Helio Ocean: nice usability surprises, bad battery life

I’m on Day 4 of using my Helio Ocean, and I’m back with some updates on interesting things I have found…

Good:

1. When you send a text message you can easily add extra people. Just fill in box #2 with someone’s name and a third box will open up to fill in yet another name, and so on.

2. Suprise awesome usability feature: it seems to remember your favorite people so when you’re making a text message and click contacts, you can see the most recently messaged people right in the popup menu so you don’t have to go very far to message them again!

3. Google maps has full routing capabilities. Meaning you enter a route and it can tell you directions at every step of the way, as you go on the map, using the internal GPS. So basically you no longer need a dedicated gps unit in your car (not to mention while walking).

4. AIM/YIM signon is multithreaded, meaning signing on to all your services isn’t as bad as I thought. You click the center “helio” button on YIM then click it again to sign on, press back. Then go to AIM and do the same. So just about 5 clicks (mostly of the center button) will get you simultaneously signed on to everything. I still wish they had a way to sign on with one click like they do for signing off.

5. This phone doesn’t have all this ‘received phone calls, sent phonecalls’ myriad menu items. In fact I was first confused on how to get to a list of stuff I’ve been doing but it turns out just hitting the send key gives you a nice visual history of sent/received messages and phonecalls all in one screen. And you can easily either call or send a message to any of the items on that list. Very nice unified interface for what most phones have something like 4 separate screens.

Neutral:

1. I found out that the email-to-sms gateway for helio is sprint so you use phoneNumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com if you want to get a text message on your helio. Added Helio SMS support for the next release of Planypus.

Bad:

1. Battery life is UNACCEPTABLE. Literally heavy usage will kill your battery in a day. Yesterday I was using the phone, took it off charge at about 9am and at around 1am at night it was already dead. Not cool. I did use the browser a lot but if this phone can’t go for a day, how can it be useful? Unless they are really expecting me to only use it a couple times a day. Since it has realtime chat and full internet access you gotta think they’re marketing to real net addicts. And net addicts don’t use their internet device just a couple times a day. Helio, fix my battery please!

For those that missed my previous posts on the Helio Ocean please see the posts on the good, the bad, and the ugly, and missing features.

That why you buy a spare battery

So the answer to a bad battery life is that I have to spend $50 more dollars on a $300 phone and carry around extra weight? Not the right answer. Now i see the iPhone also will have a similar battery life, perhaps its unavoidable given current battery technology and power requirements of devices with large screens and internet access. Hopefully battery tech will improve a year from now and they will release a better battery to fit the same slot.

I’ve got the ocean I just picked up last saturday, lots of nice bells and whistles, but MAN that battery life is just BAD. This is my first phone to use for non voice (had a razer for just simple voice) so I love all the features and the GPS features on it are really nice. But reception is so so unless your in mainstream areas, I guess my house is between 2 hills in Los Angeles and I get 0 to 2 bars often, usually 1 or less bar). But the battery…I go to work at 9 am, and by the battery is under 25% by 6pm. It actually went out of power before I got home by 8pm, because I took 4-6 outdoor pictures (no flash) and did use the browser for aproximately 30 mins to an hour), I did have the instant messenger running throughout the day but I wasnt messaging on it. (perhaps the 3G net connection is eating the battery). But I think i might have to return this. The battery can barely make it before I get home from work, and thats with me at work and not using it. I can’t imagine using this on the weekend going out, and actually on it heavily for more than an hour or 3….which sucks because the battery is killing me from liking this great phone.

As I said in another post here, I haven’t had the battery problems others here are describing. I leave my Ocean logged into AIM and Yahoo 24/7 and I have yet to have the battery go dead on me. I leave the house about 6am and usally don’t come home until after 6:30pm with plenty of battery life to make it through the evening. And that’s after using the phone as an MP3 player all day.

I do know from reading the product specs, though, that the phone is supposed to have a dedicated chip for playing audio/video that requires less power than the phone’s main processor. Perhaps browsing the web heavily is what kills the battery for you. I only use my web access spuraticly and usually only for a few minutes at a time.

I remember one of the first nights I owned the phone, I had been playing with it all day and the battery showed 25% charge left. I had dumped a bunch of music and music videos on it, so I decided to drain the battery by watching music videos. 2 1/2 hours later, after I had watched/listened to everything on my 2gig SD card, it was still going strong.

My only thought is that I’ve only had my phone about 3 1/2 weeks, so maybe they’ve just recently done something to lower power consumption and increase the battery capacity…

That sucks you paid as much as you did. I paid with my American Express Card and called Helio directly to order my ocean. Not only was the price $195 for the Ocean but they threw in a free bluetooth headset which is awesome. Aside from that point, I usually charge my phone every night as it is, in addition to keeping a car charger at all times. So between home and my car, and including the fact I use my phone from making calls all day to playing music via my bluetooth stereo headset (another bonus) and yes, it has died on occasion… but what phone wouldn’t die after any kind of use. Until my “phone” is using power cell technology (joke), I can deal with what’s been offered.

9am - 1am with heavy usage? Thats a full 16 hour day. Unless you plan on using it in your sleep, I dont see what the problem is. If you don’t like to sleep and need the phone for 20 hours at a time, spend $20 on a car charger and plug it in whenever your on the road. Earning $20 shouldn’t be a problem for someone who doesn’t sleep =D

I like the HELIO Ocean. I agree with the battery life issues, and it definitely gets hot, which is why I am glad I snagged the $99 unlimited/$195phone/free bluetooth/free 2-day shipping deal. It is definitely not just a phone, and even though I was saving my pennies for an iPhone, I am pretty pleased with my Ocean. I will wait a year or so because of the network snail-ness of EDGE. I am a frequent cell-phone switcher (always upgrading to the latest), but I will hang on to my Ocean - the IM/Text/mp3 and other cool features are making me very very happy. Cant get gMail to work with my phone yet, though . . . thats not cool. Myspace comes up, and is OK, but the webpage looks stupid (They definitely need to fix this), so I will stick to my laptop for that.

Look for the deals - it makes the Ocean a smarter choice . . .

Strangely playing with my friend’s iphone, the google maps seem to load faster than on the ocean

well if u really think about it, the battery is pretty good. i mean, u sed it ran from 9am to 1am. plus u used the internet most of the time and with the iPhone, the battery is shot once u use the internet for more than an hour. JC sed he was on the internet, had IM running, AND took 6 pictures outside at 25% battery!! if u ask me, thats pretty insane!

Okay!! enough with batteries just get a backup. Want I want to know is reception, is it good or not, how is the drop rate on calls…. I m on the phone all day and currently have nextel which sucks…. planning to change to Helio Ocean… Can anyone tell me how strong in the signal in their areas and do they have lots of dead zones

thank you

Does anybody else have a problem with their Ocean freezing up for 5-10 seconds at a time?

This happens to me very often, and I just have to wait it out everytime…

Yeah, battery kinda sucks that’s why I bought an extra one to keep me juiced.

I have had 3 of these helio ocean I can not get my Microsoft to work and cannot find the file viewer to view files I have place on the phone it freezes up and have to take the battery off for it to come back on

I also do not like Helio service and Helio Phones. Drift slides back while I talk, letters are so small that I cannot use the internet, Google Maps are aslo useless, the phone is so slow that by the time you find anything you get lost. Bad service, Helio employees do not know the basic things. When I change the service I was billed double because I got wrong advise from Helio. They could not tell me my minutes used for about 4 weeks. The records they had were 5 days old and then they charge their customers for going over the call minutes. Terrible company practice, bad service and bad products. My contract expires in 20 months, I cannot wait until I can drop them.

well i haven’t quite got mine yet, its still in the mail, but i got the phone for $99, the all in $99 a month for unlimited, and if i would have ported my number over i could have also got the activation for free.

i too am a frequent cell phone switcher, i had the iphone, the edge network is shit, and it’s a beautiful phone inside and out but lets be honest i rather have a girl with a busted face, hot body and a fat ass than a girl with a hot face that’s fat. becuase she might look good in the face, but everything else is useless.

plus you gotta look at it like this… the iphone is drop dead sexy, but for 100 bucks a month u get nothing, 15 goes to unlimited data and 85 bucks you get what.. 500 minutes???

no mms, no gps, cammera that looks great on the iphones screen but shitty on ur comp, no video, ringtones you have to pay for, and idk i had it for a couple months and got rid of it. paying to much money for nothing..

helio ocean, has all that and more, and… for 99 bucks a month you get everything, unlimited everything. plus it runs on the sprint network.

battery, bleh.. who cares get another battery.

but for the helio ocean $99, all in unlimited $99/mo, free activation (if you port a number), free 2-3 shipping, IM ME on aim (john roffle) for the details. hopefully I can hook someone up and get a free month in return =D

(now here’s the catch, if you want to get the phone for $99 you have to sign an “in store” contract which basically says you promise not to cancel within the first 4 months, if you do that then u have to pay an early term of 300 on top of helios 175 early term.) so if you plan on keeping them for at least 4 months your ok, or if you return in the first 30 days (i personally think the 4 month in store contract is reasonable being that they are knocking so much off the phone’s price) but if your interested let me know. =D

Battery life sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No!!!

Apparently none of you who are bashing the battery understand electronics at all. If you are using something electronic all day, the battery is going to die out on you quickly. Say, for an iPod, you have about 10-14 hours of music and 4-8 hours of video, and that uses very little current compared to internet and talking. An electronic device lasting 16 hours with heavy usage is awesome. People are asking for unrealistic results with batteries now. That type of technology doesn’t advance anywhere near the speed that electronics increase. Unless you want to go back to batteries being 3 times the size, don’t expect too much more in usage on any smart phone in the near future

This may be late… but to your “good, bad, ugly” browser question: your solution is in a neat program called “opera mini 4″. much quicker than helio’s crappy stock browser.

Oh, yeah, and… battery life also has much to do with the size of it… smaller is cooler and trendy. But, the price of being cool costs you battery life via smaller battery cells to hold electrons.

When they came out with the psp slim? slim = cooler. slim = slimmer battery. slim = reduced battery life overall.

[...] while other parts are, well… lacking. Until I have more to say, good reviews can be found here and here. I will say this though: the battery life seems to be *really* bad. I will have to look [...]

i ordered my helio off ebay. it was 80 bucks, free 2day shipping. new, signed a 2 contract over the net. it was so fast and easy and i saved so much money. if your gonna get one and u have a little bit of patience i say do that.

i love my helio.

i can kinda agree with the battery, but the only reason i know my dies quick is im on it like blue bonnet! ha no jk, but i do use the messengers and internet like every 5 mins. and it seems to die on me at the end of the day which isnt bad, cause usally ill just have the carger with me

I absolutely love this phone. I have had almost every major phone at one time or another and I can say none of them can hold a candle to the Ocean. I use my phone 24/7 because I use it as my business phone as well as personal and I get a lot of battery life out of it.

I use instant messenger at least 3 hours a day, send at minimum 50 to 60 text messages and make dozens of phone calls and she keeps ticking. By 10 pm is when I will usually be down to 50 percent power remaining but given that I start my day at 5 am, I think this phone rocks.

I would recommend that anyone who is having short battery life problems, let your battery die and the phone turn off by itself before recharging. This reduces any memory these batteries may develop that shortens life span. If that’s not possible, keep a car charger handy at all times.

Cheers,

DJ

the battery life on it does suck since most phones can last over 48 hours on a fully charged battery , and that’s only in the battery’s prime. ofcourse you eventually lose power over the months for getting so much use out of your phone. the helio isn’t suppose to be called a phone according to helio. so since it’s not just a phone i don’t have a problem with the battery life since it does sooooooo much more than just a phone. my psp has less battery life than a helio ocean and you only use it for video games or internet browsing. oddly enough you can buy a 49$ battery or get a charging case plus battery for the same exact price all from the same site (the official helio site).

This is not just a Helio problem, it’s a 3G problem.

I’ve had my phone for about a year and the battery is about dead. I’m hoping the replacement will be better than the original.

I love my Ocean. So many convenient features you don’t find well-executed on similar phones. Battery life has not been a problem for me, even in remote areas until very recently. I have had 2 year-old battery’s and swapped them out as they were close to dying, while the other charges. Now, BOTH battery’s won’t last more than 4 hours. Still love the phone, I just need the battery problem fixed, like yesterday.