Comments on: Helio Ocean: missing features

By: Yan

Yan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:27:09 +0000

Helio started of as a great brand in my mind and they systematically destroyed themselves. I decided not to post another blog because I still respect what they were trying to do, but something along the way went seriously wrong. First, my phone broken and only 3 days past warranty they refused to do anything about it. I’m not paying another $300 for another Ocean. Second, when I was signing up they refused to give me the myspace no-contract offer that I found out about 2 days after I signed up. Again, I let it slide because of my belief in the brand at that time. Time and time again, Helio has chosen inflexibility and robotic thinking over brand building by doing favors. They will be paying for it by a mass exodus when the iphone comes around.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:26:13 +0000

I had to post, even though this blog is old. I’m also eating the $175 early term fee after 5 months because of horrible customer service. Seriously. Worse than Dell, AOL, and T-Mobile combined (That’s saying something, considering I went back to t-mobile). So many bugs. So many problems. Ugh.

By: Sherri

Sherri — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:55:15 +0000

I loved the Ocean overall, but decided that dealing with the beyond incompetent customer “service” was worth eating a $175 early termination fee.

By: Heliogurl

Heliogurl — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:08:52 +0000

I only have 1 thing to say. Actually 2. #1, I started to have a problem with the phone when I used the headset/headphone to listen to music. This same headset also acts as a headset/earpiece when answering calls. The moment I took the headset/earpiece out, my ocean still thought the headset was in. Thus when someone called and I answered the regular way, they couldn’t hear me, I’d have to plug the earpiece back in for them to hear me! This was rediculous! Then evry since, it had done the same thing. Come to find out, 2 hard resets later… the phone STILL acts up when trying to get people to hear me on the other end!! I will say that customer service was very helpful and courteous and is shipping me out a new ocean. They think its a hardware issue and not a network issue. I love texting and checking my emails, GPS,etc. I’d still use the Ocean if they could resolve the static/speaker piece.

#2- There is no selection in the settings that allows you to turn OFF the headset and switch to regular phone so that you can talk into the mouthpiece as normal. In my kickflip, there was an option in the menu to turn off the headset.. incase the phone still thought the headset was in it. The rep told me “I think they made the ocean too quick and put it out to the public too quick before they found if the bells and whistles truly worked! They were trying to compete with the other smart phones out there, especially the iphone. But they’re fixing the gliches”.

Uh huh…

By: robbierobbie

robbierobbie — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:53:16 +0000

I returned my Ocean after 2 days. The interface is bad, period. Try to enter a calandar event from one date to the next. You use the horizontal keyboard for the event entry and you have no calendar to check days, you just have to know the date and it is entered in this format 01/01/07. So now you have to round up an actual calendar to see what’s happening. Then you can’t actually use the number keys on the horizontal keyboard (using the alt key) , you have to use the vertical numbers keyboard in order to make the archaic format entry. That was IT for me. Now I, and veryone else who decide to make use of helio’s generous return policy is waiting and waiting and waiting for a refund check. It is not happening… BE WARNED!!!

By: ruben

ruben — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:47:11 +0000

ummm just to let you know, for #4, if hold the DOWN button [under the flame] for 2 seconds, it takes you straight to text messaging mode.

By: Yan

Yan — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:31:38 +0000

Yeah every day I discover more and more issues but I still love it and I think it’s probably the best current solution for the problems that it solves. Other issues I have found

1. When sending AIM messages, it makes a sound/buzzes on outgoing messages, but not in YIM. First of all why would you waste the battery of the device by doing this? I know I sent the damn message, I can see it on the screen, no need to tell me what I just did. Incoming message alerts are fine, but also let me configure them because I don’t want that nasty AOL sound on my phone or within a 10 mile radius of me.

2. Occasionally the vibrating alert for outgoing AIM’s becomes long. Instead of the 0.5s burst which is somewhat tolerable (but not fully, see above), I get these nice 2 second vibrations. Is someone trying to drain my battery on purpose?

3. White screen of death. Two times my phone has crashed so that when I browse the web all I get is a white screen. The resolution both times was to get support to walk me through a reset procedure involving entering some codes into the phone. They will try to walk you through a bunch of seemingly useless steps like clearing cookies and caches but the real solution is a hard reset.

By: KRM

KRM — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:22:21 +0000

I’ve also become quite perplexed at the Gmail function of the Ocean. First, as another commenter commented, it downloads all my email, regardless of whether I’ve read it or not. This is ridiculous because I end up reading emails on my Ocean that I’ve read on my computer already. Also, when attempting to send photos (to my photo blog mostly) the Gmail doesn’t send on the first try. It fails, and then I must go into the gmail section of the messaging dashboard itself and press send/receive. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s quite annoying.

Also, I’m not sure what the deal with HelioUp is yet, but I can’t figure out how to access it from a computer. This makes it pretty damn useless so far. They indicate a “share” function, but who knows when this will come. I raise this issue because I would like to upload video to my photo blog, or to http://www.vimeo.com, but the larger video size isn’t message-able, so they are pretty much stuck on my phone or on the HelioUP/Album website. Lame.

One final thing that is annoying is (although I knew this getting into it) that when you’re on the verizon network, only voice and messaging works–not data transfer. Unfortunately, I live in Washington, DC and on Verizon is the only carrier that works on the Metro (subway) here. It’s still nice that the voice works, as compared to all the other cell phone companies, but it would be nice if data transfer did as well.

This being said, i’m still enjoying my ocean immensely and will continue to use it.

By: Harry T

Harry T — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:50:18 +0000

Excellent points, especially those about additional customization of the menus and buttons. Here are a couple more…

I wish you could set the alarm sound to be different from the rings of incoming calls. Also, it would be nice to set an alarm for an event on a different day (from that of the event), e.g. on the day before in the case of an early morning appt. Changing the date/time of an event shouldn’t cause the end date/time to reset; instead, it should adjust to be the same elapsed time as the original event.

By: yuzi

yuzi — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:52:11 +0000

i’m the best , helio….