Well, Helio is going the way of the dodo! It’s being acquired by Virgin Mobile, and the brand will eventually merge into the Virgin brand. When Helio came out, I thought that their focus was a little too narrow. When they first came out they were going after Korean ex-pats, and people who wanted advanced Korean features on their phones. While the company did well (170,000 subscribers is nothing to scoff at), and their phones were pretty cool and had a great user interface, they just could not compete.

My problem with Helio was that it was not GSM. While I don’t change phones that often these days, I still like to pull out my SIM and put it in a different phone for the day or the weekend. CDMA phones just don’t have that and I just never got to use Helio because of it. Now if their network piggybacked off AT&T and T-Mobile for GSM/UMTS, I would most likely have given them a try. I keep hoping that Virgin will jump onto the UMTS bandwagon, but given that 40% is the company is owned by Sprint, that is most likely not happening.

Adios to Helio!