Helio Ocean Hacks: Crits and Tips

Image taken with my Ocean.
I thought it couldn’t be done. I thought the Ocean was all locked down — and the UI definitely is — but the iPhone isn’t the only handset hottie of the year to get her mods on. I’m not a particularly technical person, so these suggestions are not the “…then you go into terminal” kind of hacks, which scare the g-string right off me. They’re the “here’s some fun, easy things to make the Ocean kick a little more ass.” Oh — and the usual disclosure: Helio sent me an Ocean, and I just unwrapped my Fin. More on that later.
* Heliocity is the “unofficial Helio resource”. There’s a lot to be learned in the forums, and they blog bugs — and the fact that Helio listens, fixes and responds (like with the YouTube issue). You can easily see how them being a small company makes Helio human — in the best way possible, I think.
* Here is the ultimate post on Ocean how-tos, like getting YouTube videos. If you’re a Mac person, don’t bother with file conversions (yet). In this post, they walk you through Opera but… About the Opera Mini 3 browser — yes, you can download it and have lots of fun, but no keyboard support. Java only goes one way on this device — for now. Lots of people *love* Opera on their Helios, but POO on them for no qwerty.
* In this respect, Opera is sadly like Drinktini. It downloads easy, nice idea, but going to the corner store is faster: I like looking for new drinks and sharing them with friends, but damn it’s slow — and because it’s Java, only works in the slider orientation (no keyboard).
* Surf better. First, go into your browser, go down to the bottom and take off Mobile Safe Search. Just because. You can bypass the Helio home page with your bookmarks: Take a few minutes to click “surf”, and add a few bookmarks — like Google search. You might want to even go to the bottom of the page, view the HTML version and bookmark *that* version, as it’ll have complete content. Then to surf, all you need to do is hit “menu” and left softkey for your main sites. I put my blog login pages in the lineup, so I can sign in and blog from anywhere. Works for MT but only for text; we’ll see about WordPress soon.
* Periodically clear your cookies and browser autofill, especially if it starts acting funky. Launch the browser just click Menu, then tab over and click Settings. Clear the cookies, cache and history, then uncheck auto-complete and save. Then close the browser (end key) and restart.
* Download Google Maps GPS. It’s *so* worth it, you can GPS yourself and never get lost. When it’s on, hit the red alt key then P (numeric zero) and it’ll find you. Change to street view to see what streets you’re near. I found a propane filling station for our last SRL show in San Mateo with that app, very handy.
* Make your photos sweeter: in the menu, make them the highest resolution (1600-1200) and quality “fine”.
* Photos — Helio Up or Flickr? Emailing to Flickr takes a minute and a half to post on your Flickr photo page, but only because you go into the email interface to send the image. Tag your images in the Flickr interface with a few defaults if you want (like moblogging), and tag them in the subject when you send them in, too. You can Geotag them, too. Helio Up takes seconds — but watermarks your images, bleh. They know people don’t like the watermark, so it’ll probably change soon.
* Don’t forget to sync your contacts: go into contacts and synchronize. It’ll update your online Helio address book. Here’s how to get your Apple contacts into your Helio account.
* How to switch devices so easily it’s scary: Gizmodo has an excellent post that takes you step-by-step. Niiice.
I love my Ocean. We’ll see how I swim with the Fin — with such a nice camera and no qwerty it’ll probably just be my party phone, but it’s way sexy enough for that…

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