A Holla to Helio's Hip Little Phone

The Mysto, an action-packed handset with voice-activated capability, makes the tiny mobile provider a mouse that roars, except where multitasking is concerned

by Olga Kharif

Editor's Rating:

The Good: A slickly designed phone that offers a wide array of nifty features like voice search

The Bad: Battery doesn't last long when using power-thirsty applications like video and music; no multitasking capability

The Bottom Line: A cool phone you'll be showing off to your buddies

Reader Reviews

I just test-drove my first cell phone from Helio, a tiny wireless provider targeting the in-crowd, and I must admit it was a cool ride. Helio, which has fewer than 200,000 customers, prides itself on offering the hippest gadgets and services around. The latest addition to this lineup is Mysto, a new Samsung slider handset jam-packed with capabilities that had me showing it off to friends.

The Mysto, priced at $149 with a two-year Helio contract or $320 without a new agreement, offers a lot more than many phones in this price range. I am not saying it's perfect. For example, when watching video or playing music, the battery drained pretty quickly. According to Helio, Mysto should last for at least a full day of heavy usage, but I found myself recharging it every five or six hours. That said, this problem afflicts many multimedia phones, and very few of them come with this many capabilities.

At just a half-inch thick, Mysto is one of the slimmest slider phones available, yet it offers all the latest cell-phone features, and more. The metallic gray handset has a good camera, plays songs and video, and even acts as a mass-storage device, with 16 megabytes of internal memory to hold music, photos, and video clips. There's also a slot for a microSD memory card with up to 4 gigabytes of additional storage.

Pizza on Demand

But what truly separates this device from most phones is a wide array of novel software applications and services. For starters, there's TellMe Search, a voice-recognition application and service from Microsoft (MSFT). I have to say, I'm hooked. When looking for a sushi restaurant, all I had to do was speak those two words into the phone, and almost immediately I was looking at list of nearby options on the screen. After picking one, I pressed on a "directions" icon. The phone used its GPS satellite receiver to determine my coordinates and map a route to the chosen eatery. The voice input was much faster than using the number pad to type keywords into Google Maps, which is also available on the phone.

The phone boasts another nifty search option: With a single press of a button, you can launch a window with a search box and type in a word such as "pizza." The results range from a Wikipedia entry on pizza to song titles that include the word, and, of course, a link to view a list of the nearest pizza joints.

And this was just the tip of the application iceberg. The Mysto can also record voice memos and send payments to other people using a service called Obopay. The phone's browser allows for easy jumps to mobile content from YouTube, MySpace, and other popular sites, while one of the two touchscreen buttons takes you directly to your own bookmarked favorites.

Let Your Inner Artist Out

Even the application for the phone's 2-megapixel camera offers some novel features. The menu allows for easy printing using a USB cord or Bluetooth wireless to connect with a printer. You can also embellish photos with special effects, adding cartoon images like a flying pig or changing background colors to turn out Andy Warhol-like dreams. My favorite effect was the sketch mode, which turns your photos into pencil sketches.

I was a little disappointed that the music player couldn't be launched with the touch of a single button. But there are shortcuts that can quickly take you to your video and music albums and Helio's multimedia store. The device's speaker is decent, but not great, so it's better to listen to music with headphones. (A set is included with the phone.)

A Hard Fight for Subscribers

There are other shortcomings to keep in mind: You can't multitask. If you're listening to music or watching videos, you can't compose a text message or surf the Web at the same time. This is an unfortunate omission, as a growing number of high-end phones now let you use more than one application at once. It's also frustrating that when you want to close an application, you have to either close and reopen the slide or press the "power" button on the side of the device (and that button is small and not particularly convenient to press). On most phones, you can just hit the "end" button to return to the main menu.

There's one other caveat. Helio has struggled to sign up customers just like another youth-oriented wireless provider named Amp'd, which shut down abruptly last year. Like Helio, Amp'd had prominent backers. So even though Helio's owners, SK Telecom and Earthlink, recently reaffirmed their commitment to the venture, there's no guarantee they'll put up with red ink forever. That means there is a risk that a great Helio phone like the Mysto could become an expensive paperweight. That said, if you're already a Helio customer or drawn to the service's unique multimedia services, the Mysto is definitely worth a look.

Kharif is a senior writer for BusinessWeek.com in Portland, Ore.