In-Depth Review: Helio Mysto
Here it is, folks: Helio’s newest device, the Mysto. Following a shh-top-secret release at a few Helio stores on December 26th, it’s all set to be released at Helio shops around the nation on January 16th.
The Mysto is Helio’s fourth candybar style slider. The price at release is $149 for new members or $320 for existing members.
- Index:
- The Specs
- In the Box
- Device Exterior
- Inside the Device
- Interface
- Browser
- Ringtones and Screens
- Games and Apps
- Messaging
- Plan
- Music Video
- Calling
- Contacts
- Battery
- Conclusion
- Form factor: Slider.
- Color: Sapphire Blue.
- Dimensions 4.1″ x 1.9″ x 0.48″
- Weight: 3.35 ounces.
- Screen: 2.22″ QVGA, 240×320 resolution and 262k colors.
- Talk time: 3.5 hours.
- Memory: 106mb internal. MicroSD/SDHC support (Up to 4gb)
- Camera: 2.0mp camera with 4x digital zoom and flash.
- Video Camera: Record up to 320×240, with 14fps in MPEG-4
- Bluetooth Profiles: HSP, HFP, FTP, OPP, AVRCP, and A2DP. (Headset, Handsfree, Stereo Headset, File
Transfer, Object Push, Printing, and Bluetooth OBEX) - Media: VOD/MOD, MP3, MPEG-4, WAV and H.264
- Internet: Full HTML browser. With zoom & cursor support.
- Messaging: Text, MMS, Ultimate Inbox (Helio Mail, Gmail, AOL/AIM, Windows Live/Hotmail, Yahoo!/Messenger, and Earthlink)
- Search: Direct search from the idle screen through Yahoo, Google, Yelp and Amazon, with support for the Tellme voice activated application and Google Maps.
The Mysto is a gorgeous little device. It ditches the harsh angles found on most popular sliders (We’re looking at you, LG VX-8500) for smooth curves, while managing to squeeze everything in a ridiculously thin package (12.19mm). It really is remarkably thin for a CDMA Slider - just a tiny bit chunkier than it’s GSM brother (Samsung U600) due to chipset differences. All the ladies (and guys who happen to like tight pants), rejoice: It’ll fit in your pocket without making it look like your smuggling a loaf of bread in your pants.
The face of the device features 4 touch sensitive buttons. All of the these buttons feature Haptic Feedback (a small vibration is triggered whenever one is pressed), which helps to eliminate the guesswork usually associated with touch-sensitive buttons.
The only oddity about the design is the placement of the End Call key. The End Call key has been placed on the right edge of the device, presumably to ensure that you don’t unintentionally hang up on people with your face skin. Its unusual placement makes it like holding hands for the first time; while it can be kind of awkward at first as your fingers wiggle around to find a comfortable fit, it’s just fine once your hand gets accustomed to the layout of things.
It finally seems that someone in the design department is realizing that flush keypads are a pain in the ass. While the Mysto’s keypad is still partly flush, they’ve added a palpable groove between each row of numbers to help your thumbs find their way in the dark. While I do miss the days where each number actually got its own button, it’s likely a consequence of devices getting slimmer.
The Mysto features the same proprietary OS used across all Helio devices. Graphics (especially the top-most area of menus) have been polished up to better match the Helio look. Helio’s user interface has always done its job well.
A feature similar to the Ocean’s “One-Click” search has been implemented. Slide Mysto open, and hit the flame key to bring up the search box. Type in whatever you’re looking for, and it will automatically generate a page with quick access to results from Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, and other search engines.
All pretty standard stuff as far as settings go.
Be it that you’re just not vibing with the touch buttons, you can adjust the sensitivity to a range of levels between “Low” and “Ultra”. I wouldn’t recommend setting it to low - it really is low. I was momentarily convinced they’d stopped working all together. If tiny vibrating parts spooks you for some reason (for example, because they’re secretly powered by tiny, ageless gnomes), you can disable the Haptic Feedback. The clock/calendar display is also customizable to allow quick viewing from the idle screen, along with the banner, font, dial style, and backlight settings. Almost all of the bases are covered here - The only thing we’re sad to find absent is the ability to add new alert sounds (such as customizable text message sounds).
The Mysto features the most recent version of the NGB Browser featured on Helio devices. The browser stability and speed have both gotten notable upgrades since past versions - in over 2 weeks of testing, we’ve yet to see the browser crash. While we’ve been known to give the browser a hard time every once in a while, it’s better than nearly all default browsers found on other devices. Of the dozens of mobile browsers out there, the only ones that really put the Helio browser to the test are Opera Mini (which can be added to the Mysto) and Mobile Safari (which, for obvious reasons, can not be added to the Mysto).
Where as new versions of the Helio browser generally just bring bug fixes and other behind-the-scenes enhancements, the Mysto browsers sports a pretty cool new feature: GPS Awareness. Third-party sites (locational based Twitter for the win!) can now request your current location, which brings up a security prompt as shown in the image above. Once you allow this information to be passed on , these sites can tailor search results and other fun stuff to your current position without forcing you to run around looking for the nearest cross street. (Yeah - we’ve all been there.)
The Mysto comes packed with rings and screens.
In total, there are 24 pre-loaded tones on the device. “Starfall” is a favorite around here, reminiscent of some magical melody from Zelda . It comes stocked with a good selection of rings: a few normal rings for all the squares out there, a handful of funky fresh hip-hop beats, and a couple that sound like they’re straight off an SNES cart (in a good way). Custom ringtones are supported (MMF, MID, or MP3s renamed as MID files). Just send’em to your device via email, or PCLink if you’re using MMFs.
It comes with the same variety of screens found on most devices, with a few new ones to mix things up. Custom screens are supported - anything downloaded to your photo album is screenable.
While the Mysto comes with a handful of good demos and access to the standard repertoire of awesome applications (Google Maps, Myspace Mobile, Buddy Beacon), we’re most excited about the shiny new “TellMe” application.
Making its debut on the Mysto, TellMe is a new GPS-based application designed with built-in Voice Recognition. Stay up too late fighting crime and need a liquid pick-me-up? Just open up a TellMe search and say “Coffee” or the name of a specific Coffee chain. It’ll find all of the closest caffeine dealers based on your current GPS position. The voice recognition didn’t seem to have trouble interpreting what I searched for, whether it was a genre or a business name.
Search results are formatted well, with all locations of the same chain linked together. Clicking into any result gives you a some options: Call, Map, Directions, and Share. The first three work just as they sound. Share lets you quickly send a text with the business name, street address, phone number, and a link to a map with the location of the restaurant which should work on any device with browsing abilities. You can also type a short note to the person in case you’re worried they might think you’re sending them business information for the hell of it. “Hai Steve Olive G4rden at 4p. Unnecessary LOL. C.U.THR DAWG.”
At 2.99 a month (First 2 months free), it’s one of the more useful applications Helio offers as a subscription. I imagine that the subscription fee may ward some people away from the app, which is unfortunate - TellMe is a killer app that works really well with Mysto.
Communication is Helio’s strong point. One of the flagship features of all recent Helio devices, the Ultimate Inbox really just does communication right. The Ultimate Inbox tucks all of the most popular messaging suites into one tidy little menu. AIM, Yahoo, MSN, POP, IMAP - it has damn near everything you will need for sending texts/e-mails to your friends, boss, girlfriends, girlfriend’s friends - what have you. The Ultimate Inbox comes with some predefined e-mail services (and their respective IM clients too) such as Helio Mail, AOL, Windows Live, Gmail, Yahoo, and Earthink, as well as support for custom POP3 and IMAP e-mail accounts. We heart Ultimate Inbox.
Any downers? As with other Helio devices, we’re still not able to add words to the T9 dictionary. (I want “Sushi”, not “Pushi”, dammit.) As with other Helio devices by Samsung, sliding the device closed after hitting “Send” in a text message cancels the message. Annoying, but not unavoidable.
Oh plan menu, how I love thee. For you organize my life (To-Do), wake me up in the morning (Wake-up Call), plan my days (Calendar) , help me do teh mathz (Calculator), allow me to check whether or not it’s a good time to crank call another hemisphere (World Clock), follow recipes properly (Unit Converter), remember crap (Notepad), and let me time how long I can hold my breath (Stopwatch)!
Everything works as expected here. Calendar’s deadline feature is damn handy for ensuring that my massive pile of bills doesn’t go unchecked. To-Do eliminates the need for me to be one of those creepos who carries around a little black book everywhere.
2.0MP cameras are becoming increasingly popular on mobile devices, and the Mysto is no exception. Like nearly all mobile device cameras, it’s not going to blow away your digicam. However, it’s more than adequate for the tasks most commonly required of it. (Namely, taking pictures of things while drunk, or taking pictures of drunk people. )
Lots of tweakability within the camera (resolution up to 1600×1200, white balance, lighting, effects, and frames. There’s even a clown frame, which is great for creating pictures that scare the crap out of small children [and me.]). No autofocus, unfortunately. (Full-Res Low light photo example.)
Tweakability for video camera is about the same (resolution up to 320×240, white balance, frames per second options, effects, and lighting. Sorry, no scary clown frames.) (Video Recording Example)
For not being specifically marketed as “Music Phones” (a la Juke) , Helio devices have surprisingly strong multimedia abilities. We’re still aching for a music player that can keep the beats going while doing other stuff (besides browsing). High Capacity HC cards are supported; we tested out a fully loaded 4GB Kingston SDHC card without a hitch.
I haven’t been able to do any real video playback tests with it yet - While video’s from the store play back (quite well), it didn’t seem to want to play videos we added manually. Chances are it’s user error - we’re looking into it.
Call quality and volume are both excellent on the Mysto. I could clearly hear the person on the other end during a test call made in a loud, crowded mall. Speaker phone volume is slightly louder than that of the Ocean - as always, it could be louder. It’s not loud enough until we can hear people whispering craptalk to the caller while we’re driving down the freeway blasting german techno.
From within the call menu (after unlocking the face buttons by pressing the flame key), you able to increase the mic volume, enable speakerphone (I noticed a fun new option: At the beginning of a call you are given the option to go to speaker phone by hitting the Helio flame key, rather than having to dig through the menus.), access memos/contacts, send texts, mute the keypad, or send your number (as a series of tones, useful for automated systems). While on speakerphone, you can slide the device closed without killing the call.
Got a huge posse to keep track of? You can store up to a thousand contacts (Or you can impress people by storing 10 real contacts, and filling the other 990 slots with names like Harrison Ford, Hannah Montana, and Marty McFly.) You can store up to five numbers for each contact, along with an e-mail address, Myspace ID, street address, ringtone, group label, birthday, and also the ability to turn off voice recognition for a specific contact in case their name keeps giving false positives.
Contact Syncing is an awesome feature thats been standard across every device Helio’s offered to date. You can easily sync contacts to and from Helio’s server - if you ever swap devices or replace your device, downloading all of your contacts to your new one takes just a few clicks. If you’re coming from another carrier, you can import any Microsoft Outlook address book to your Helio account via the MyHelio webmail page.
While we haven’t gotten the chance to give this one a formal battery testing, the battery lasted longer then we expected it to while reviewing the other features - with moderate-heavy use of the device, it lasted well on through a full day of testing. Your mileage will vary depending on your settings, of course - but the battery life hasn’t given me any trouble thus far.
This is a great, solid device with very few shortcomings. If you’re in the market for a slider, don’t hesitate in grabbing a Mysto.
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