Lamenting the Death of Helio, and How the iPhone Helped Kill It >> The Far Side of Tech

photo credit: extraface

I’m always one for the underdog, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a big part of why I chose to purchase a Helio Ocean last winter. At the time, I was looking for a slick smartphone that wasn’t a Blackberry, had 3G (so the iPhone was out), and generally appealed to my geeky sensibilities. The Ocean, Helio’s flagship phone, fit the bill quite nicely–so I eagerly made the jump.

(Honestly, I was waiting for the release of Google’s Android phones, but knowing that they wouldn’t show up until the end of 2008 (at the absolute earliest), I decided that the Ocean would tide me over for the next few years.)

But, like every underdog tech product/company I’ve loved (see: HD-DVD, the Rio Karma), it looks like Helio is ready to call it quits. They’re selling to Virgin Mobile, who will be getting rid of the Helio brand and making all Helio customers Virgin subscribers.

Honestly, I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. While Helio has offered some great software improvements since the Ocean launched in May 2007, and they’ve even released a new handset recently (the Mysto), Helio simply couldn’t compete with Apple’s massive influence in the cellphone market. Sure, it took Apple until the iPhone 3G to match most of the Ocean’s features, but it was the iPhone that became a cultural phenomenon due to its groundbreaking user-interface.

(This is actually very similar to how the iPod took over the MP3 player market, even though Rio led the initial portable player charge.)

Now that the iPhone 3G is on its way, and practically every cellphone manufacturer is aiming to catch up to the iPhone’s innovations, Helio just can’t seem to do the same. Sure, they’ve got the mystical Ocean 2 on the way (some good spy coverage here), but it simply looks like a slimmer Ocean. Unless it has a bigger screen, along with touch capabilities, it won’t fair too well against the post-iPhone smartphones/mobile computing devices.

It’s a shame that Helio was never that successful. Their initial phone offerings weren’t all that great, but I appreciated their mission–to bring the high-tech phones from Korea to the America’s barren cellular marketplace. With the release of the Ocean, they succeeded in doing just that.

I know many knock the Ocean for not looking “sexy” enough–which I suppose is true if you consider sexy to be an anorexic nightmare like the Motorola Razr–but the Ocean is sexy to me as a geek. It screams of well thought out industrial design with its unusual oval shape, the infamous dual slider design (which still gets me “wows” to this day), and the gorgeous screen. Hell, I even love the Ocean’s every-so-satisfying thunk when closing the phone. For those interested in an in-depth look at the Ocean’s fascinating industrial design process, check out this excellent cover article from Technology Review (registration required).

Software-wise, the Ocean launched with a decent feature set, but it is the upgrades that came later that really make the phone shine. Helio has since added a great mobile Youtube interface, push e-mail, and, taking a cue from user hacks, support for Mobile Opera. It aimed to compete with T-Mobile’s trendy Sidekick, and it put up a heckuva fight–the only problem was that they didn’t see the iPhone coming.

For now, I’m not itching to get out of my Helio contract just yet. Assuming Virgin doesn’t start disabling Helio services, and doesn’t start charging me more for my monthly bill, I still think I can ride out my contract and wait for an Android phone.

If anything, Helio’s demise has shown me that I truly have a knack for liking scrappy technologies. I’m not quite sure what to make of this yet…

Update: Helio’s official announcement is now online. Cnet also has coverage of the deal.