Fin Is In: Reviewing the Helio Fin
It’s official: Fin is in. I’ve had the opportunity to test the Helio Fin for the past few weeks and I must say I am very impressed by Helios latest offering. The Fin is currently the thinnest flip phone available in the US, beating out all its GSM and CDMA counterparts. This EVDO phone (Using Sprints network) packs a 3 megapixel camera, a well sized QVGA display, stereo Bluetooth, and a real full web browser. Out of the box, which may I add is just as beautiful as the phone, you have a full messaging dashboard so you get IM or text to your hearts content, full uncripled GPS support with Google Maps, as well as 100MB of internal memory that can be expanded via a microSD card. The Fin media player that supports MP3, AAC, WMA, and MP4 video. Not too shabby. For you to enjoy the music Helio included some decent stereo headphones and a PC connect connect cable in the box so you can no only enjoy the music you can purchase from their music store but load up from your PC.
Some little features about the phone that I have come to love is how customizable the device is. There is pretty much no setting that you can’t change. Trying to hit the youth market the phone is packed with cool pre-loaded ringtones.
Helio takes multimedia seriously. The phone has built in Flickr integration, and an actual photo editing application that lets you add filters, effects, and even resize any picture you took. The phone will also connect to a USB or Bluetooth PICTBridge printer to print the photos you have taken on the phone.
But the phone unfortunately isn’t a total rave. The battery life on the phone isn’t so great. Expect about less then 3 hours talk time and the keypad is flat with no way to tell the difference between numbers when are texting and driving texting.
Overall, if you want a VERY thin flip phone and want fast data connectivity Helio is worth consideration. For only $119 a month you get unlimited everything and pay only $150 for the phone with two year contract which after a survey of the wireless industry is VERY competitive.
