Slide here: The inclusion of a full horizontal QWERTY keyboard and a full vertical number pad (extended at right) made the Ocean somewhat plump. To make the 22-millimeter-thick handset seem slimmer, Helio girdled its midsection with a silver band just five millimeters across at its widest point. Credit: Toby Peterson

The headquarters of the mobile-communications startup Helio look out over the hip Los Angeles district of Westwood. The streets are packed with teens and 20-somethings--whose business Helio covets. The company aspires to hook them on the ultimate multimedia device: something perfect for talking and messaging, gaming and Web searching, social networking and finding buddies via GPS. By the end of this quarter, Helio predicts, its year-old service, which leases space on the Sprint network, will have more than 100,000 subscribers. But the company--a joint venture between the Internet service provider EarthLink and the Korean wireless giant SK Telecom--has already burned through much of its $440 million in funding; according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Helio lost $192 million last year. Now its hopes are pinned on its newest, most radical device, the fullest expression of its corporate ambitions: the Ocean.

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