US MVNO Helio recently rolled out the latest addition to its line of state-of-the-art EV-DO 3G handsets called the Heat. Crafted for Helio by Samsung, the Heat is touted to be thin slider-style handset that boasts of providing loads of the similar sports as Helio’s Drift, however with slightest price tag. The GPS-powered Buddy Beacon system that was first released on the Drift is available, for instance, as is stereo Bluetooth support. With the aim of keeping the price lower, though, the camera in the Heat is just a 1.3-megapixel unit, plus there is no external memory card slot - although internal storage has been increased to 136MB.
However the thin profile Heat does have a bit that neither the Drift nor any other Helio handset up till now is claimed to have: touch sensitive controls. The Heat, rather than a conventional set of softkeys and call buttons, uses electrostatic touch sensors on the phone’s face to maintain the look fresh at the same time giving the required navigation support. Additional sports are a 2″ QVGA display and all of the usual Helio MP3 and Video on Demand support that we’ve come around to guess.


















