Apple makes features more usable. Simple idea, but the results are magical.
I had a conversation with some sales reps at the Helio kiosk Friday night.
I asked them which phone competes with the iPhone. This question put them on the defensive, and they proceeded to question and antagonize me about the iPhone instead of selling me on the Ocean. I finally asked them to demo their phone rather than talking about how the iPhone is so bad. (Some of their more intelligent comments: What happens when the touch screen breaks? How do you use a touch screen when you are driving? Cover Flow is just the same program they have in iTunes.)
I’m disappointed that they lacked the skills to sell and demo their flagship phone in a way that would amaze me, but they did walk through some of the features for me and I got to play with it a bit.
My impressions:
Video download/streaming: was fast on the 3G network. This is an extra-credit feature for me, but the screen is too small and the interface too traditional (too many clicks required to navigate) for me to enjoy it. I’m hoping the iPhone screen is larger.
MySpace Mobile: I’m not big on MySpace. This feature has no weight for me.
GPS/Google Maps: Really cool and useful. The interface lacks the Apple flair and takes too many clicks, but I would find this feature indispensable once I owned it. This is lacking in the iPhone, but I can’t imagine it not being added later.
Web Surfing: This feature holds medium weight with me. The Ocean isn’t a device I would be surfing the web on, even at a bus stop. Sorry.
Music: This holds high weight with me. I didn’t get a good look at how this works other than the rep showing me how the speakers sound on a downloaded version of a song vs. a song that he ripped. So I don’t know. I doubt it is as slick as an iPod though.
Games: Holds zero weight with me. Didn’t look at them.
Messaging: High weight for me. This is the reason I need a smart phone. Using gmail seemed easy enough and it handleds POP3. If they iPhone disappoints, I could compare the Ocean to a BlackBerry, Treo, or Sidekick to see which I like the best. The rep didn’t explain how they unify email and IM, but maybe he will next time.
Contact Sync: High Weight. They didn’t show me this and I didn’t look at it.
The Ocean, like every other smart phone up to this point, failed to impress me enough to buy it. It has many features, but they don’t beg to be used. The iPhone, although it lacks things such as GPS, removable media/battery, third party programs, etc., takes the features that I don’t need and I don’t miss and makes them more immediate, accessible, usable, enjoyable, and desirable. Apple takes features that already exist in other products and reduces the cost of using them, i.e. makes them more usable. Simple idea, but the results are magical. That is the reason people that switch to Macs become evangelists and why Apple has fan boys. And that is why the iPhone will shake the market.
12 responses so far ↓
1 caitlin // Jun 18, 2007 at 10:17 am
Don’t judge a phone by sucky sales people.
2 Jon Robinson // Jun 18, 2007 at 10:30 am
Thanks Caitlin. I won’t. The sales reps were lame, but it was the interface of the Ocean that I didn’t like. Too much clicking. This is why I don’t have a smart phone now and why I don’t use all the cool features on my Nokia. They are a pain to use.
3 caitlin // Jun 18, 2007 at 10:46 am
By the way, I found this link from using “helio ocean buy” keywords on google, yet your article is supposed to be tagged “apple, iphone” . I think you would benefit apple by improving your content, the only people who’ll find this article are those interested in Ocean.
4 Bill // Jul 16, 2007 at 10:28 am
The two things that lead me to never buy an Iphone is the price tag for the phone itself and the crazy high price of AT&T’s service plans. They really go for the throat with there data and messaging plans, i know i use to have a black berry with unlimited. Right now im looking at The Ocean or a Treo from sprint. Thats just my two cents
5 Jon Robinson // Jul 18, 2007 at 12:51 am
Bill, I thought the service plans were competitively priced only charging $20 for unlimited data tacked on to the normal price for minutes, rollover, nights and weekends, mobile-to-mobile, and 200 texts.
Since purchasing the iPhone, I wouldn’t so much as glance at an Ocean now. The thing is amazing. The wi-fi/safari combination is the killer app of the iPhone in my opinion.
6 michael the iphone killer // Aug 26, 2007 at 2:30 pm
iphone if you bought it you got robbed with out a gun! sucker! no flash no video no ring tones no nothing really just a pretty ipod thats it can’t hear a damn thing on it when your on the phone what a big heavy peice hardrive to lug around need a suitcase for that sucker …
7 michael the iphone killer // Aug 26, 2007 at 2:31 pm
kisses to the steve job devil gazillonare
8 mckinney_905 // Jan 3, 2008 at 8:33 am
Like caitlin said “Don’t judge a phone (device) by sucky sales people” there are many thing that the rep could had said but ok not to harp on that but I would not go as far as to call Steve JOPbs a devil (or would I?) but I would aggree to a point that a robbery did happen, The Iphone dose lack many things, like the Instant Messageing, support for more multimeda (Email) the flash on the camera which leads to the picture messageing, video messaging the GPS, the Downloading of the MP3’s the
9 Billy Joe-Bob // Feb 8, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The Iphone is a crap. The ocean is so many better. Trust me. I am gonna git one after my Iphone gits stolan.
10 Jean Baptiste // Apr 4, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Why I Won’t Buy the Helio Ocean because it’s not a GSM Phone
11 Asif Ahmed // May 17, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I think there are a lot of good items listed here, but there area areas of the Helio Ocean that are quite strong. One area is pricing where it is 1/4th the price of the iPhone. You also get on the 3G network which does make a difference.
We sell the unlocked iPhone and Helio products online and being a user myself I can tell you that I would not choose one product over the other, it all just depends on your use.
Asif Ahmed http://www.heliopromo.com
12 Risket // May 21, 2008 at 11:27 am
I currently own the Helio Ocean and have for several months now. I have enjoyed every part of this phone. Personally I’m not big on having music on my phone because let’s face it, these days almost everyone has an iPod. So I don’t need music on my phone. However when I DO put some songs on my phone it’s usually just songs that get stuck in my head often for when my iPod isn’t in reach. The Ocean comes with stereo headphones which double up as a hands free headset and music through them sounds awesome.
Web surfing on the Ocean’s default web browser can be a bit of a pain in the scrolling finger. However they allow you download a mobile Opera browser which allows you to zoom out and scroll down the page much faster, then zoom in on that spot. It takes me about about the same amount of time to go to the Bank Of America web site to check my bank than it does with a computer, and I’m talking about the full HTML site NOT a mobile formatted site.
Messaging on the Ocean is awesome. I have six of my email accounts set up on my Ocean so whenever I get an email I get it instantly on my Ocean and I can still check it on my computer later on if I don’t want to reply right away. I have Yahoo, AOL, MyHelio (you get when you sign up), GMail, and two business emails for my clothing line.
Contact Sync on the Ocean (as well as their other devices) is extremely simple and genius. Basically you sync it over the 3G network to your email contacts. The week before I ordered my Ocean I went through all of my Yahoo contacts and made sure I filled out as much information as I could, entering alternate phone numbers and emails, web site links, their address, Instant Messaging contacts, etc. When you set up your email on your device (which is all free of course) all you have to do is go to your contacts on your phone then click on Menu and go to Synchronize. Then you choose your email account you want to Sync from and within a few seconds it loads all your contacts from your email address book to your phone so you can call, email, im and even get a map/direction to their house just by clicking on their name in your contacts and clicking on their phone number, email, address, etc. Yahoo Instant Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger are also built in to each of those email menus and there is no charge for any of it as long as you have an All-In plan.
I pay $70 a month every month and I use this phone for everything. It also has a File Viewer program so you can view many different files on it. I’m a graphic artist and I have an entire Pantone Color Chart in PDF format on my Ocean so when I’m talking to someone about a design and what colors to use I can scroll through and they can choose the exact color they want right there.
Another great thing about the Ocean is the YouTube application. The Helio Ocean comes with a free YouTube application that allows you to browse EVERY video on YouTube in a fast and easy to use application. It also makes it really easy to view your favorite videos, make comments, upload videos you took right on your Helio and post video replies.
I’d also like to say that the free Google Maps with GPS works awesome. You could pay $10 a month for the Garmin Mobile application with turn by turn voice prompts but trust me, what the Ocean comes with works perfectly fine. My girlfriend and I were taking a trip to Anaheim a few months back and decided it would be a great time to test out the GPS on our new Helio’s. We were a little scared at first because it took us to streets we never used to get down there before. Turns out it was a faster route that we had been using and it saved us about a half hour of driving time. We usually use directions we printed off Google Maps a while back but the Google Maps on our Helio was much more updated so it knew about a much newer route that wasn’t there when we printed out the directions the first time.
The iPhone has a lot of things I really like but in my opinion it needs to make a LOT more updates and drop the price a couple hundred dollars before it really gets my attention. The iPhone doesn’t allow MMS message…. so if someone attaches a picture to their text message, you’re not going to get it. The only way you can receive a picture is through email…. and how many people have email on their phones? Not as many as the people who’s phones allows picture and video messages. I also text while in the car. Sounds dangerous but I’m such a big texter that I don’t need to look at the keypad while I’m texting…. how would I be able to do that with a touchscreen that only has a QWERTY keyboard? I think a quick fix for this would be to simply allow the OPTION for a numeric keypad with T9 texting instead of the QWERTY keyboard. I’ve played around with an iPhone many times and the biggest problem I have is typing the right keys on that small keyboard.
Helio is supposed to be coming out with a new device that is supposed to be like an Ocean 2. Around the same time Apple is going to be releasing their 3G iPhone. We’ll see how those two devices compare in a few months.
Also to throw this out there, I’m a huge fan of Apple products. As a graphic artist and a musician I’d choose an Apple computer over a Windows ANY day. Their prices are just a little out of my league. I do have the Mac mini and it’s amazing. The only thing Mini about it is it’s size. It’s very power. ….anyway, the iPhone and the iPod Touch have REALLY disappointed me and I know they can do better. I also plan on eventually owning an iPhone because I know somewhere down the line they will eventually update things to the point where I would be happy to own one. As of right now, for my tastes, the Ocean is perfect for me and succeeds where owning an iPhone would fail.
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