Gizmodo: kickflip

Sizemodo: Helio Heat vs. All Helio Phones

Jason Chen — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 18:30:58 EST

Now that you know what the Helio Heat looks like, you're probably wondering whether you want to use this instead of other Helio phones. Well here ya go. The Heat compared to the Drift, the Hero, and the Kickflip. It's noticibly smaller than the Drift, so if you're looking for size over functionality, the Heat is the way to go. Just remember that fat phones need love too. – Jason Chen

Helio Heat [Gizmodo]

Video Review of the Helio Kickflip

johnb — Wed, 31 May 2006 10:58:47 EDT

In the proud tradition of BagelBoy and his Schmear Kittens, Hel.io has created an unwatchable video review of the Helio Kickflip featuring a young Russian girl—barely 19, fellas!—talking inanely into a Helio Kickflip.

While we love us some underage phone reviewing action—I personally watched Red Hot Girls Doing Motorola RAZR Reviews Uncut #15: Schlong Port over 20 times—we encourage you to head over and see for yourself what salvation must be like after a while. – John Biggs

Video of Kickflip with our sexy Maryna! [Hel.io]

Gizmodo Interview: Sky Dayton, CEO of Helio

Joel — Tue, 02 May 2006 20:58:21 EDT

Sky Dayton stopped by the Gizmodo offices today to chat about the launch of Helio, the new MVNO featuring, you know, fancy stuff—unlimited streaming video, MySpace access, the allure of Korean design. We sat down with him for a few minutes to ask our most pressing questions about this new contender to Amp'd, Virgin, and all the other cell phone companies. (Just kidding; the questions weren't very pressing at all.)

Rather than give you a blow-by-blow account, here's a mish-mash of quotes, facts, and most salient bits you might be interested in. (We might put up an MP3 later of our interview if there's any demand.)

After the jump, a bulleted list!

Quotes are from Mr. Dayton; All else is us.

• HOT (Helio on Top) is a feed reader application that even uses stock-standard RSS on the backend, but you can't add your own feeds. Silly!

• Why 'begging?' "We took that term from Korea ... It's just different."

• Have you aimed at Myspace from the beginning? "Yes."

• Why isn't your logo a sun? (This question stumped Mr. Dayton.) "How can you argue with that?" (He offered me a million dollars for stymying him, but I declined.)

• Why no PC connectivity? "If you want to connect a device to a laptop, get a [PCMCIA] card. You don't need a battery. It just goes in and it's with you all the time." No plans to ever offer use of devices as PC modem.

• Who's providing the backhaul? "These devices [Hero and Kickflip] work on Sprint ... We have deals with Sprint and Verizon."

• How about smartphones and/or QWERTY devices? "We have a really cool roadmap ... We've got many new devices in the works and many new services on those devices."

• You guys seem worn out. Have you been doing this all day? "I got up at four in the morning. I've got make up on from CNBC."

More Fun Facts

• Allowing open phones to be activated on the network: Could be done but not with the data, basically. Don't expect it.

• Helio hired the UI designers who did the Sidekick.

• Expect the Earthlink Wireless business to be rolled up into the Helio brand in the future.

• "I'm pretty sure Gizmodo was the first RSS feed I ever subscribed to." Too bad you can't get it on your Helio HOT!

HELIO Launches Two Phones

johnb — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:01:13 EST

HELIO, a new mobile carrier aimed at the kids—you know who you are—will launch this spring with two phones, the black Hero and the white Kickflip. The Hero is a rebadged Pantech phone with a slide out keyboard and 3G compatibility, while the Kickflip is made by VK Mobile.

Like Boost and others in this space, HELIO is joiny venture between SK Telecom and Earthlink. They're even hooking up with MySpace to provide email, messaging, and photo viewing. That might sound lame to some, but there's no denying the MySpace market is massive.

There's no information on the price, yet, but the phones are pretty hot and they have a unique HELIO UI.

Product Page [Helio]