The Ocean is hefty by today's sleek standards, pill-shaped in a market of rectangular things. The company's future will hinge on how much the intended audience appreciates those departures from conventional design. It will hinge on the layout of the device's QWERTY keyboard. It will hinge on the simplicity of the messaging and search interface (for instance, the way it allows users to start typing from idle mode). And it will hinge on--the hinges. ... operated by a novel three-way spring, they enable a keyboard to slide out from one side of the device and a numerical keypad to slide out from another.
In short, the Ocean's design will make or break Helio. "Basically, to us, design is the product," says Sky Dayton, the 35-year-old CEO ... "We get up every day thinking about this," he says. "If you go talk to the CEO or COO of one of the major carriers, I doubt you will hear much about the color of icons, the feel of the soft-touch paint. I can wax poetic about the spring-loaded action [of the sliders]." And he does: "We really thought about the movement and the sound it makes when it opens, the sound it makes when it closes. You see a mannerism when people open and close their Ocean. It's like humming to yourself."
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But the dual-slide format brought on another problem: no one wanted a device that was too thick. A number pad and a QWERTY keyboard would normally require two sets of springs and hinges--one for each slider. This would tend to fatten the gadget. What's more, Helio wanted the sliders to be rugged and to have a firm "feel," like the luxurious thwunk of a BMW's door.
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The appearance of bulkiness was a concern to everyone on the team. There could be no sacrifice of function, and no putting the Ocean on a diet. So the engineers sat down to figure out how to make their slightly bloated electronic jackknife appear as thin as an iPod Nano. The Ocean could not be made thinner, but it could be made to look thinner. As the old carpenters' saying goes: "Paint makes it what it ain't." Shininess and hardness can make a device seem larger; Helio chose a soft-touch black paint, partly for its slimming effect and partly for its somewhat minimalist look and slightly rubbery feel.
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[Helios] wants to sell phones to more people than geeks, or even hipsters in SoHo and Santa *Monica. Already, the device is being discussed in the same breath as the iPhone. But just how the Ocean, the iPhone, and other do-it-all devices will compete and coexist in different markets won't be clear until the competition, and the shakeout, begin this spring.
