Um, you get free mobile to mobile with me, phone calls and texts!

By Jess on 04 Jul 2007 @ 12:42 pm

I just made the switch from Verizon to Helio yesterday because I liked the look of the Ocean. At the moment I’m wondering if I can go back to Verizon without signing a contract, mostly because I’m still unsure what I think. The browser is really clunky but the rest seems good.

Of possible interest:
I plugged it into my laptop (running feisty) expecting for it to come up as a USB drive, but dmesg tells me this:
[347659.816000] usb 3-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
[347660.096000] usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[347660.096000] cdc_acm 3-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device

which I guess means that I can use the Helio internet with my laptop. That seems useful.

By Philip on 13 Jul 2007 @ 7:19 am

Thanks for the comment Philip. Supposedly Helio will update things like the browser over the air.

Great to hear about the Ocean plugged into an Ubuntu machine. Since it didn’t show up as a drive, does that mean you can’t copy music to it easily?

By Tommy Keswick on 13 Jul 2007 @ 9:10 am

If you select “mass storage” on the helio while it is plugged in then it shows up as a drive (two drives if you have a microsd card inserted).

What I wrote above is wrong it seems. That is strictly for syncing. Helio doesn’t let you tether the phone to your computer to use as a modem. :/

By Philip on 17 Jul 2007 @ 1:15 pm

I just got one. Love it. Yes, it seems to work fine with ubuntu under mass storage mode. Only problem I’ve encountered, which isn’t specific to ubuntu is that to transfer your video and photos (which aren’t particularly good quality) you need to have them on the sd card…otherwise, they just aren’t recognized and can’t be transfered.

By Aleska on 10 Dec 2007 @ 10:37 am

don’t know if you bought one yet, but i have an extra helio ocean i’m selling on craigslist (yes, i’m a real person, not a spammer). no contract so you can try it out for as long as you like. see details at http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ele/506831064.html.

regards,
katherine

By Katherine DePasquale on 12 Dec 2007 @ 12:36 pm

bizarrely the link i posted doesn’t seem to work…but if you click on my name you get my ad (for the helio for sale)! weird…

By Katherine DePasquale on 12 Dec 2007 @ 12:37 pm

I’ve been trying to find out how to tether the Ocean to my laptop via bluetooth (similar to my Blackberry now), but so far nothing… I have run across older threads stating that Helio doesn’t support tethering, but wondering if anyone’s worked around that yet. Thanks.
http://www.DirtBIKEmods.com

By Janice Kellie on 31 Dec 2007 @ 1:28 am

CANNOT Theather a Helio phone to a laptop…they started last year, the Spint company bitched, cause that is the network they ride on…and so no conneckie to laptopie….and no hacks that I have found…also goes against you user agreement….

By Charly on 13 Feb 2008 @ 3:46 pm

Fry’s sold me Ocean, saying it fully supported use as modem to Internet with full 3G speed.
So far it wants to know if it should be in mass storage mode & does not offer a modem mode. 4 days of 30 day trial used so far. It did configure to use my email address but truncates most emails & requires too many seconds to load remainder of each partial email.
No video has played so far.
$65 for 500 national minutes plus everything is too much if it is not fast Internet connection to my notebook.

By Eric Lee Elliott on 16 Apr 2008 @ 5:38 pm