Editor’s Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. To sign up for the free weekly e-mail alert, go to rcrnews.com/email. Every week we’ll review a new wireless application or service from the user’s point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works and what doesn’t in the mobile content industry. The Tuesday e-mail alert also features columns from RCR Wireless News staff and industry experts on various aspects of the mobile content industry, along with featured news and an “On the Margins” roundup that discusses how events outside the wireless industry may impact it.
Service: Helio’s User Interface and Music Store
Running On: Helio’s Drift, a black slider from Samsung
Yay: Sharp, colorful graphics look great on the Drift’s oversized screen. Navigation is simple and pretty intuitive, helped by a dedicated “back” button. Plus, the Drift itself generates a “wow” factor from observers.
Nay: Helio On Top, an everchanging banner at the bottom of the idle screen, is definitely designed for the short-attention-span crowd. However, you can turn it off. Streaming video quality was grainy at times, but not awful. Download speeds seemed to vary widely, from about 30 seconds for a song to a frustratingly long wait for some page loads-but talk to Helio’s network provider Sprint Nextel about that one.
We Say: Give Helio credit for spicing up the menu experience with candy colors and cool graphics. Opening any menu option pops up a plethora of content and quality pictures or animations. Comedy video streams from The Onion? Check. Dishing dirt on celebs? Check. Missed connections on craigslist.com? Check. The only downside to the variety of content is that it tends to mean a lot of scrolling, because there’s simply too much to offer on a single screen, even on one as large as Drift’s. Numbered menu options help you jump from option to option, but you don’t know what they are until you scroll down to them.
Helio On Top definitely caters to the MVNO’s youthful demographic, cycling blurbs from SI.com, myspace.com, MTV Mobile, celeb news site Pop Sugar and the more staid Yahoo! News, plus a bit of flogging their own downloadable content. Clicking to see “more” of a headline takes you to a list of all the stories, instead of directly to the story itself, so it isn’t quite a one-click link to the proffered content. But side-to-side navigation then takes you to a list of stories from each content provider, so you can quickly browse all sportsor news-related headlines instead of waiting for them to cycle through again on the main screen. HOT is on the verge between addicting and annoying, but I’m leaning toward addicting. The model works, opens up interesting possibilities for advertisers to explore on device idle screens.
Now, how does one make it onto the myspace.com “Friends of Helio” list that cycles onto HOT?
A search for artists like Fergie or Usher doesn’t just show a list of their songs, but heads up the results page with a crisp photo as well as a list of albums with art, a short bio and a list of similar artists, Amazon.com-style.
As far as the UI, some of the icons aren’t instantly intuitive (a paintbrush for the customization menu, the Helio flame for surfing the Web), and the navigation key will randomly switch directions if left to idle for a few seconds. The center Helio flame key is rather tiny for its importance in the navigation, so take aim well.
Internet surfing is a pleasure, even if it isn’t exactly an iPhone-like experience and is much more text-heavy than the music store. The main menu offers a list of sites to jump to, including Helio’s vaunted myspace.com connection as well as YouTube, Amazon.com, CNN.com and Helio’s own magazine-in a nice touch, the menu includes the full-color logos of the sites, not just a plain text list. It’s little touches like that that make the user experience easy on the eyes. Tapping the menu soft-key not only gets you navigation options, but bookmarks and a history of where you’ve been, in case the back button won’t get you there fast enough.
I was itching to try out the GPS-enabled Buddy Beacon feature, which allows you to list and locate friends who are nearby, as well as letting them find you. Let’s meet up at the club, yo, with all the other cool Helio users! Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone else who has a Helio phone.
