Helio Drift 3G multimedia slider: Part 2

Our favorites: MySpace integration with the ability to upload photos to your MySpace page is a nice touch

Our request: We'd like the ability to resize and adjust fonts while viewing text messages to get more characters on screen at once

Camera - Very good

Working with photos on the Drift can be entertaining. First and foremost, by sending your pictures as a message to UP (87 on the keypad), Helio will store your photos for uploading to MySpace. Image editing on the Drift is robust, with fun frames, filters and cropping options, as well as stickers, tiny graphics you can create and slap on your photos, and text overlays to add captions and cartoon bubbles. The Drift can send photos easily via MMS and Bluetooth and can print to USB and Bluetooth printers. With all these options, we're disappointed that Samsung built such a poor quality lens on the camera. Our snapshots looked blurry even on the camera's small screen; blown up to full 2-megapixel resolution, they looked fuzzy, pixilated, and overexposed, even while our white balance was set to Auto.

Our favorites: Caption bubbles and text overlays that let you insert your own words into pictures

Our request: A better camera lens for image quality that is actually acceptable

Video - Good

The video selection on Helio's network is refreshingly unique. Instead of relying on trailers and extended commercials for network television, Helio incorporates videos from iFilm and StupidVideos.com, as well as Comedy Central and Fox Sports. Though we had seen some of the videos before on YouTube, that is precisely the point: the content seemed aimed at network savvy young adults, rather than people who want to be impressed by TV actors on their phone. For music videos, Helio allows you to buy videos for yourself, for other Helio members, or ''beg'' another member for a music video (a clever feature introduced on the Hero and Kickflip handsets). Video quality didn't live up to the content, though. The picture quality was good, but videos tended to stutter at points of low reception, and it was common for even short, two-minute long segments to break and re-buffer once or twice. A full-screen viewing mode would also have been a nice touch. That said, we were happy to find our Bluetooth stereo headset streaming audio during video playback.

Our favorites: The viral video section that lets us catch up on all the cool stuff we missed on YouTube

Our request: Full-screen, landscape mode for viewing videos

Music - Good

The Drift will play all popular non-DRM music formats, storing them on its ample 100MB of internal memory or on a microSD card. Helio does not currently offer any streaming audio, radio, or music download options for their network, which is disappointing, considering the music store and streaming satellite radio options available on Sprint's Power Vision and Verizon's V Cast networks. For comparison, a plan on Sprint's network (from which Helio buys airtime), including unlimited multimedia, is priced within a few dollars of Helio's entry-level plan, though Sprint's plan includes streaming audio from Sirius satellite radio and a music download store. The music player was surprisingly robust, one of the few we've seen with a tweakable five-band equalizer for music. The phone's stereo speakers were loud enough for close listening, and the phone includes some ''3-D Surround'' options for playback which seemed to improve sound quality, though ''3-D Surround'' is a stretch. There is a dedicated play/pause button on the side of the phone for quick access to your music. Bluetooth stereo headphones were easy to setup and use, and streaming audio through our set sounded good.

Our favorites: A five-band equalizer for precise fine-tuning


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