The Helio Drift has been reviewed by Cnet and let's see what the good folks out there have to say! They gave it a thumbs up for its form factor, its comfortable grip, its user interface,all the onboard multimedia-functions ,EV-DO support and GPS capabilities. Cnet couldn't but help also dig the Drift for cool features like; MySpace Mobile integration, Google Maps for Mobile, and Buddy Beacon, a friend-location service. The website lists the slippery keys as the only Achilles Heel of the phone and looks like they were pretty impressed by the handset!

The Helio Drift is a smart slider-phone with a whole gamut of cool features including; EV-DO support, and GPS capabilities. One also comes across the very nifty feature Buddy Beacon" which is a location-based system for locating and mapping a preselected list of friends. Measuring 3.8x1.8x0.7 inches and weighing 3.53 ounces, the Drift is compact and lightweight and also includes a a microSD card slot. Other features found on the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO) Drift include; 2MP camera, 128MB memory, stereo bluetooth and video recorder.

In the end the website writes "While the Helio Drift may not be as attractive as the Helio Kickflip, the Drift's high-end multimedia features, Bluetooth, and GPS capabilities make it probably the best handset that Helio has to offer."

Helio is a brand name not many of you might have heard of. I certainly hadn't, until today. And I am excited. Now Helio's doing something different. It's positioning itself as a mobile brand built for young and tech-savvy customers. That's you and me. For starters, Helio has announced two cell phones, the Hero (shown in the image) and the Kickflip. These multimedia handsets should excite 3G users in the United States.

The Hero and the Kickflip inherit a legacy from their high-end cousins in Korea (one of the most advanced 3G markets on this planet). This is topped up with design tastes suited to US customers. What you therefore get is a fashion-savvy hi-tech device. The jet-black Hero is a multimedia loving phone. It's got a 2.2 inch, 262K-color high-resolution QVGA LCD display, industry-leading audio capabilities with full duplex stereo speakers, removable memory, and a 2.0 megapixel camera with digital zoom and flash for capturing pictures and video. Add to this mix, a co-processor chip, which will make you sing and dance to your music and videos.

The funky named Kickflip is pearl-colored, packs the features of the Hero, albeit in a sleek body with an innovative swivel opening that flips to the right or left with the simple nudge of your finger.

Helio's also coming out with some innovative services. There's the MySpace Mobile service which will allow users to network through mail, bulletins, profiles, blogs and photo galleries. You can read more about it at Helio's website.

You need to wait till Spring 2006 to grab all this. Watch this space for breaking news.