. Peter has one as well, and he’s just as nuts for his. I’ve said before “screw the iPhone”, and I mean it: it’s not there yet. But the Ocean is. It has all the phone features of the iPhone, but does them all better. Google maps, just like the iPhone, but with GPS. Do you know how handy that is? A great weather app via Accuweather, a decent built-in Web browser, and a few things the iPhone doesn’t have, like an Office doc reader and Exchange sync.
YouTube is represented, and a neat tool you won’t find on the iPhone: a built-in MySpace app. Not for everyone, but for most of you. Oh, and the 2-Megapixel camera on the Ocean has a flash and takes video, with direct uploads to Flickr or YouTube. That is awesome.
Besides what’s inside, the Ocean’s design is great. A responsive dual-sliding mechanism that gives you T9 for dialing and QWERTY for text and email and everything else. What’s more, the unlimited pretty-much-everything plans are highly competitive, with the $99 plan featuring unlimited minutes.
So there you have it, readers: as a guy who could have any cellphone from any provider in the USA, my piece is the Ocean from Helio, and I’ve never thought twice about it.