Does Helio's super-phone live up to the hype? Burning the midnight oil following his excited unboxing, Vincent stayed up into the early hours putting together a hands-on review. Was he impressed? You better believe it...

Dual-slide, full keyboard, achingly high-quality screen, GPS, instant-messaging... that's just the tip of the Ocean's spec iceberg.  But key to a handset's success is the ease with which you access all those features, and it's here that Helio shines.  While Vincent isn't sure the keyboard lives up to that of the Sidekick 3, it's nonetheless eminently usable and makes the Ocean a true messaging device. 

Some glitches in photo messaging might have marred the experience a little, but the same can't be said for the GPS functionality; again, Helio have managed to turn plain old sat-nav into a killer app with their Buddy Beacon and photo location tagging.

For all it does well, though, the Ocean isn't a smartphone - nor are Helio positioning it as such - with rudimentary Office document viewers about as far as it goes in terms of working on the road.  Microsoft Exchange syncronisation is also notable by its absence, although Helio are currently testing the functionality for inclusion in a future upgrade.

All the other major mail providers are catered for out of the box, however, as is IM functionality with AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.  Google Talk is another "we're working on it" feature.

Priced from $295, the Ocean is potentially Helio's move into the bigtime.  Check out Vincent's full review, including videos of the phone in action, over at SlashGear!