Helio Ocean Dual-Slide Device

QWERTY keyboards are on the rise, and slide phones seem like a thing of the past. Helio recently announced, however, the first dual-slide Helio Ocean phone. Slide one; a classic slide phone with numeric keypad. Then slide two; a full QWERTY keyboard. The Helio Ocean phone (if I should call it that, I might get eaten by a whale) includes Instant Messages, text messages, picture messages and emails from all the major portals, ISPs and even corporate Exchange servers, in one location. Also, over-the-air music downloads, video-on-demand, a high-resolution camera, an HTML browser, MySpace on Helio, GPS-enabled Google Maps for mobile, and Buddy Beacon.

Unlike the Sidekick, with the Helio Ocean, you can make calls, with out the feeling of holding a cinder block up to your face. It includes a 2.4-inch, 260K color high-resolution QVGA display, which you can view portrait; slide one, or landscape; slide two. External stereo speakers, a 2.0MP camera, which doubles as a video camera that holds up to 2 hours of video. Integrated messaging means users don't have to choose between text messages or picture messages, this phone (again, the whale) supposedly has an unlimited inbox.

Surfing and searching the web can be a pain, but with the Helio Ocean, there's no need to open a search box. Just begin typing on the roomy QWERTY keyboard from the idle screen and the device automatically switches into search mode. With the 2.0MP camera, and the GPS, users have the option of attaching their GPS coordinates to their photos.

The Helio Ocean is planned for launch in Spring of '07 at a suggested retail price of $295.