Helio Gets Thin (Finally) with the Fin

What's this—a thin and light Helio phone? Hard to believe, but here it is: the Fin, a Samsung-made flip-phone that's barely a half-inch thick but packs in plenty of messaging features, a three-megapixel camera, music and video downloads, and turn-by-turn directions via Garmin GPS. Nice.

Helio is pushing the Fin ($175 with service plan, available now) as the thinnest clamshell in the U.S., and at just 0.45 inches thick and weighing in at 3.35 ounces, the hip MVNO just may be right—the next-thinnest flip-phone I can find is Samsung's 0.5-inch thick A717 on AT&T. It's a refreshing change from a carrier known for its big and bulky phones; the feature-packed Ocean is 0.81 inches thick and weighs a whopping 5.6 ounces, while the relatively slim Heat still has a girth of 0.6 inches.

The Fin may lack the full-QWERTY keypad on the Ocean, but from the looks of it, the clamshell arrives with many of the same features. For multimedia, you get streaming video and music downloads, including access to Helio's mobile audio and video storefront; a three-megapixel (nice for a phone this thin), 100MB of internal memory, plus up to 4GB of microSD memory expansion; and support for stereo Bluetooth headsets. There's also a full HTML browser, as well as "Helio on Top," a news and entertainment-driven slideshow of pictures and headlines that you can now customize with your favorite RSS feeds.

Also on tap is Helio's cool unified messaging center, which lets you fire off instant messages and e-mail from the same interface. A wide range of services are supported, including AOL, Yahoo!, and Windows Live instant messaging, as well as out-of-the-box e-mail for AOL, Earthlink, Gmail, Helio, and Hotmail subscribers, plus support for POP and IMAP accounts. There's no Exchange support, but you get push e-mail for AOL, Helio, Yahoo! and Windows Live accounts.

The Fin also does well in the GPS department. In addition to Helio's nifty Buddy Beacon GPS locator service (which shows you the current location of your pals on Google Maps) and the ability to tag your snapshots with GPS coordinates, the phone ads turn-by-turn navigation courtesy of Garmin, including voice directions and a database of six million "points of interest." Also available the Ocean, the new service goes for $3 a day; no word on a monthly rate (both TeleNav and Verizon's VZ Navigator offer $10/month plans, for example).

All in all, sounds like a pretty hot phone. I should be getting my review unit later this week, so keep your eyes peeled for a full review.

Related:
Helio Fin [Helio]