Helio Drift 3G multimedia slider

With its icy cool design and unique interface, Samsung's new Drift for Helio finds your friends with Buddy Beacon and MySpace Mobile. Will it help you find the party, or leave you all alone?

Design

The Helio Drift is not your average Samsung slider. Perhaps it was the white finish on our review model, but we found the phone to be more alluring than even the Samsung SGH-D900 Black Carbon. The Drift slides open with a healthy snap, and the camera is permanently exposed on the back panel, so it can be used when the phone is closed. The keys have a soft white backlit glow, and the ''Send'' and ''End'' keys are highlighted in pastel. The sharp, 2.1-inch screen and the entire Helio menu structure -- more or less the same as on Helio's earlier Hero and Kickflip phones -- is clean and modern, with easy-to-read text and slick icons in the submenus. Overall, navigating the phone was a pleasant experience, especially since many of the phone's functions are well integrated; for example, you can access a messaging option from most applications. On streaming media and Web browsing pages, a menu at the top of the screen presents your History and Bookmarks for easy browsing.

Calling - Very good

The Helio Drift makes calls that sound good on both ends of the conversation. Calls were clean, though reception in lower Manhattan was spotty, ranging from two to four bars even while we were standing still. The phone has a speakerphone that was adequate, but not loud. Three-way calling was handled with a single key - press ''Send'' to make the second call and then again to join the conversation. We were pleased with the Drift's handling of our contact list. The PCLinkPro software synchronized the phone with our Outlook database via USB (you can also add contacts on Helio's Web site, which are then synced to the Drift over the air), and searching the contact list was a breeze, thanks to its live, while-you-type search capabilities, including T9 completion in the search field. Finally, the phone will search the contact list while you type and auto-complete the number. In battery tests, we got just under three and a half hours of talk time out of the phone, which is actually more than the three hours Helio promises. However, with GPS, Bluetooth, and the EV-DO radio all blazing, battery life will shrink considerably.

Messaging - Good

The Drift comes with a typical SMS/MMS interface, and a downloadable IM client offers AIM, Yahoo and MSN support. Messages are legible, with about half of a 160-character message displayed on screen at once, which is less than we prefer. The star of the Drift's show is MySpace Mobile, the same app that we enjoyed on the Hero and the Kickflip. Part of the Web browser, MySpace is hidden as a link on Helio's WAP homepage, making it difficult to find the first time through, and we had trouble logging on (the mobile version's logon is apparently case sensitive, while the Web version is not). But once you're in, the interface looks polished: the mobile MySpace reduces all profiles to the same layout, as opposed to the online version, which can look more like the inside of a high school locker. Once you're all set, you can e-mail, blog, post pictures and comment on your friends; pretty cool, although the interface can be slow. Unfortunately, the same problems that plague Samsung sliders like the Samsung U420 also hurt the Helio Drift. The keys are flat, with little tactile division to help you type without watching the keypad. The navigational keys don't help either, as ''down'' on the four-way key is perilously close to the ''back'' key, and we found ourselves backing out of messages and Web pages inadvertently.


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