The Helio Fin: A Review of This Multimedia Feature Packed Phone

If you know anything about Helio, then you know that their relationship with Samsung has been ongoing and fairly successful. This flashy phone company continues a trend with Samsung with the introduction of the Helio Fin. This is the thinnest phone currently available in the US and comes in a bluish black magnesium body.

Helio is no slacker when it comes to the services they provide to their customers via their always exciting new phones. Just to name a few, Helio allows you to access MySpace, GPS enabled Google maps for turn by turn directions, YouTube, Flickr, and not to mention access to a plethora of instant messaging applications, text messaging, picture messaging, and e-mails all in one smooth sleek device.

"The Fin is smart, fast and powerful but thin enough to slip into your pocket without a crease," says Sky Dayton, CEO of Helio.

The Helio Fin, inside its 11.4 mm frame is packed with features. The 3 megapixel camera with a 4x digital zoom goes above and beyond the average device's specs. Of course, the the Helio Fin doesn't stop at just pictures. The 2.3 inch QVGA display also plays all of your high-quality video. Like media on your phone? How does an expandable micro SD slot of up to 4 GB suit you? The Fin also boast an HTML browser, GPS capabilities, stereo Bluetooth, and support for five different audio and video formats.

Text Messaging and Email

With the Fin, communication doesn't get much better. It allows you to combine instant messages, text messages, picture messages and e-mails in one messaging interface. Plus you have access to all your favorite instant messaging platforms as well as popular web-based e-mail applications. The Fin allows you to dive into Yahoo messenger, AOL's Aim, Windows Messenger, and e-mail applications like Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, Helio mail, EarthLink e-mail, and the ability to add additional IMAP or POP3 e-mail accounts.

Camera love

Blurry, grainy pictures are a thing of the past with the Helio Fin. It boasts an amazing 3 megapixel camera, in which you can upload any of your high-quality videos or photos to sites like YouTube and Flickr directly from the device. The Helio Fin basically allows you to share your life events with the masses as soon as it happens. How much cooler does it get? Imagine the possibilities of this. You could video or picture blog a whole vacation, with this thing.

Other cool features

This phone is cool, and when I say cool I mean that it even allows you to add RSS feeds to the home screen of the device. All you have to do is go on the Helio site and quickly set up a channel in which you can add one of the countless available RSS feeds on the Internet. You can even share your favorite RSS feed and find recommendations from other members. As well as being able to add pre-optimize feeds such as Yahoo and MTV, members can add any feed they want, even their own blog.

The Helio Fin is a GPS enabled device, which means you can get turn by turn directions that follow you in real time. It even has over 6 million preprogrammed locations, for instance it can display the nearest gas stations listed by the price at the pump. This service is great, but it costs you $2.99/day, which expensive to say the least. You do get a dumbed-down version of navigation for free, but you manually have to progress the navigation after each turn.

If you like the Helio Fin, you are looking for a sleek multimedia feature packed phone. For the amount of features you receive, and compared to other comparable devices the new Helio is fairly inexpensive. You can pick it up for $175 after rebate, which takes about six to eight weeks to process. The only set-back is that to enjoy all the capabilities of your awesome phone, Helio will rack up your monthly phone bill to nearly $100 a month. If you live a fast-paced, exciting life and are willing the pay the monthly access fees, then the Fin is definitely for you.