helio

Sorry Helio Ocean fans, this year will not bring you the highly anticipated update to the ever-popular Helio Ocean.  With Virgin Mobile taking the reigns of Helio earlier this year and the recent transition of services and subscribers, Virgin Mobile made several big announcements at CTIA today.  Despite the Ocean being the best selling device for Helio, Virgin Mobile spokeswoman Jayne Wallace had very unfortunate news.

The Ocean 2 is not going to be 2008,” Wallace said. “It has been manufactured, and there is a commitment to putting it on the market, but it’s going to be in early 09 … just because the shell has been manufactured doesn’t mean it should be released right now. We want to put it out when it’s the best it can be.”

The other big announcement disclosed a hint at the future of Virgin Mobile for next generation data networks.  With Virgin Mobile being hosted by Sprint and the Sprint WiMax service ready to go live next month, Virgin Mobile WiMax devices might soon be in pipeline

As Sprint adds things to their network - as they add WiMax, for instance - we’ll have access to these things. WiMax isn’t on the drawing board for any time soon, but when we have the handsets that can fulfill that [system], it’s an opportunity.

Source: GearLog

With the acquisition of Helio by Virgin Mobile USA on August 22nd, Virgin Mobile has finally announced the new branding, “Helio By Virgin Mobile: Plan To Have It All”.  Effective immediately are new plans and the launch of the Shuttle, Virgin Mobile’s first handset enabled to integrate such Helio services as Buddy Beacon.  An enhancement to Helio’s $80 A La Carte plan has now been added to include Unlimited Minutes rather than the current 1500 minutes as well.

The new terms of the Helio A La Carte plan mirror Virgin Mobile’s Totally Unlimited prepaid voice plan at $79.99 and will be available to current and future Helio members.  The transition of Helio’s 170k postpaid subscribers and Virgin Mobile’s 5 million prepaid customers is now complete, but the customer care services and sales operations continue to remain separate.  Additional integration is planned over the next several months and as usual we will keep you filled on the details.

Source: EngadgetMobile

The SK Telecom venture formerly known as Helio is preparing for a closure in the third quarter of this year.  After a run from 2006 to 2008, the MVNO network finally realized that 2 year contracts at $100 per month for unlimited service is not in the budget of the youth market.  While the Buddy Beacon and YouTube support were nice novelties, monthly fees and carrier contracts have proven ineffective in the youth segment as was the fate for Amp Mobile before it.  While the fate of Helio has been decided and the only topic of interest for us is the future of the Ocean 2, Virgin Mobile has come out of the deal with a steal.  Here is what Virgin’s CEO Dan Schulman had to say about the acquisition of Helio,

This accelerates our ability to offer a full suite of products to our existing base of 5 million customers…We worked hard to put together a transaction that benefits all those involved, and we are delighted to gain an important strategic partner in SK Telecom, one of the premier telecom companies in the world. The acquisition of Helio rapidly advances the products we can offer and adds a migration path to our most valuable customers, and let’s us enter the post-paid business…This is a natural evolution of our product strategy and builds upon our expansion of hybrid and prepaid services. We intend to integrate Helio’s functionality into our new handsets, support prepaid, postpaid and hybrid services, and we’ll have a greatly improved capital structure and substantially more liquidity. 

The deal between Virgin Mobile and Helio adds 170,000 customers to Virgin Mobile with an inventory of 80,000 handsets and generating $80 of ARPU.  The big bonus is that they also pick up Helio’s technology which would have cost Virgin over $25 million and 12 months to build on their own.  Saving a year in the technology game is priceless even at the expense of Virgin Mobile increasing their revolving debt from $75 million to $135 to make the deal.  

The last order of business in the Virgin Mobile takeover are the Helio Employees which currently tally in at 570, but are expected to decrease to just under 370 employees by the end of the third quarter 2008.  While we will miss our favorite MVNO network, we hope that other companies looking to join the game decide to take notes from the recent downfalls of Amp Mobile and Helio.

In a YouTube moment, it appears that the collapse of Helio (Virgin takeover) is not stopping the development Helio Ocean 2. In a video snapshot, a watchful eye over at HelioCity was able to pause and identify that the device is the much anticipated Ocean 2. While we remain skeptical that this is the Ocean 2 due to the overwhelming similarities to the original Ocean, the inner geek wants us to believe in the dual-sliding Ocean 2. If the video capture has you interested, the source is conveniently no longer online which only adds to our skepticism and could be symbolic of Helio’s future as our favorite MVNO network.  In case your memory is less than perfect, the ‘to be confirmed’ specs are below for the Helio Ocean 2.

Helio Ocean 2 Specifications:

• 3 megapixel camera with flash (autofocus not confirmed, yet)
• Dual slider
• microSDHC support for up to 32 GB
• 1GB of internal storage, 900+MB available to user
• In-browser Flash support
• 30 fps video recording (resolution unknown)
• Touch-sensitive directional pad (think LG Chocolate)
• PC sync capable

[Via HelioCity]

Today is a sad day in the life of our favorite MVNO network as Helio store managers are reporting they have been notified that some of the nationwide retail stores will be closing.  While we are sad to bring this news, we are more concerned with the future of Helio handsets, specifically the Helio Ocean 2.  With dual sliding handsets being a very rare breed, we were excited to test the next generation in Helio QWERTY, but the future is uncertain.  With the end of SK Telecom’s half billion dollar enterprise, the Virgin merger is looking to be a total takeover.

The end of Helio looks to be an all to familiar fate in the life of MVNO networks, with only Virgin and a handful of networks still operating.  Whether or not MVNO networks can remain profitable in the uncertain economic forecast in the United States remains to be seen.  RIP Helio, hopefully there will be an Ocean 2 launching on Virgin.

Yesterday’s news on the Helio Ocean 2 has inspired us to create a little side by side shot comparing both the original Helio Ocean to the upcoming Ocean 2. With a release date this Summer, our favorite MVNO network could be launching its most successful device to date thanks to an improved camera, 1GB of internal storage and support for the latest SDHC microSD expansion cards.  The biggest question is whether or not upgrading to the new Helio Ocean 2 will be worth your while and the answer is yes.  Now without further adieu here is the nitty gritty spec comparison based upon the latest FCC filings.  Please keep in mind that these specs are not confirmed at this point, but we are rarely disappointed by details in FCC documents so you can almost consider these details as fact.

If you are tired of the flip phones from Helio and need some QWERTY love, have no fear the Helio Ocean will be seeing an update this Summer.  The Helio Ocean 2 is set to launch on your favorite MVNO network in the coming months, but before the launch now is the perfect time to drop the bomb on the specs.  Thanks to some browsing around the FCC filing documents for a device known as the OZ2, the beans have been spilled on the Helio Ocean 2.  In case you are still thinking that the Ocean 2 will be a touchscreen device like its evil rival, Apple’s iPhone, you are sadly mistaken, but on the plus side you will be happy to hear that your dual slider design is still intact.  Now onto the full specs for the Helio Ocean 2:

Helio Ocean 2 Specs

 

• 3 megapixel camera with flash (autofocus not confirmed, yet)
• Dual slider
• microSDHC support for up to 32 GB
• 1GB of internal storage, 900+MB available to user
• In-browser Flash support
• 30 fps video recording (resolution unknown)
• Touch-sensitive directional pad (think LG Chocolate)
• PC sync capable

 

Helio’s ultimate inbox is about to get a whole lot more exciting thanks to its POP/IMAP email partners offering push email. The devices supported with this new push email will be the Ocean, Mysto and Fin which will prompt users to enable push functionality when checking their email. After enabling the push feature, Gmail or any POP/IMAP email account you have setup on your device will automatically push messages to your phone in realtime. The service is free and a welcomed addition to Helio’s offerings in an effort to prove that the Ocean is the “iPhone-killer” executives claim. Unfortunately this latest victory for Helio is something Apple iPhone owners can’t knock since Yahoo Push Email has never delivered on its promise and the iPhone 2.0 is still 2 months away.

[Source: Helio]

We have had our fair share of problems with the Helio Ocean and the white screen of death, but it looks like Helio has organized a run-around.  Instead of actually fixing the problem with a firmware update, Helio has gone ahead and made the Opera Mini browser an official application.  It is now possible to download direct from Helio in the Applications folder and put the white screens of death to an end.  Long live Opera Mini

Update: If you hit 67372 from your Ocean’s home screen you can get the ball rolling on installing Opera Mini.

[via: HelioCity]