It also offers music downloads, video-on-demand, a high-resolution camera, an HTML browser, GPS-enabled Google Maps for mobile and Buddy Beacon, first-of-its-kind full Web search from the device home screen.

“We leveraged Helio’s advanced technology and design capability to create a device that combines extraordinary form and features that are firsts for the U.S. market,” said Dr. Wonhee Sull, President & COO of Helio. “The dual-slide design is only one of Ocean’s many U.S. industry firsts, with advances in messaging, search, IM presence integration, GPS tagging of photos and video, and a music experience that we believe surpasses rival devices. Ocean is the result of a relentless focus on creating the ultimate combination of mobile device and services.”

The Ocean’s 2.4-inch, 260K color high-resolution QVGA display is viewable in both portrait or landscape mode and its 200 MB internal memory may be expanded to 2GB thanks to microSD slot. The video and audio formats supported are MP3, AAC and WMA audio, and MPEG4 and H.264 video.

The Ocean dashboard offers access to Yahoo! Mail, AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail, Gmail, Helio Mail and EarthLink email and also lets users add two additional IMAP or POP3 email accounts and supports push mail from Yahoo!, AOL and MSN. Integrated messaging means users don’t have to choose between text messages or picture messages.

The price of Helio Ocean is $295 at Helio Stores. Beginning May 21 Ocean will be available also at GameStop and EB Games.