CrunchGear

The Mysto has landed, and it is pretty hot. The slim slider is one of the best sliding phones I’ve seen yet. Samsung really knows what it’s doing with this form factor, and, with Helio, has made a pretty terrific mid-range phone that has high-end features.

My first impressions of the phone came not just in how it looked — it’s Heigl-style attractive — but in how it felt. This phone is a serious featherweight, clocking in at roughly 1/3 the weight of the Ocean by my estimates.

And it’s slim. “Lohan after a week long coke binge”-thin, but it doesn’t have that dime-store fake plastic feel to it lots of slender phones can have. It’s solid. And the spring-assisted slide mechanism is actually enjoyable to use. OCD kids, we’ve found your phone.

The interface is a fairly standard Helio-meets-Samsung affair, with a few minor improvements over the Fin. The Mysto features a pair of touch-sensative, Chocolate-like softkeys above a pair of touch-sensative phone keys. It’s a very futuristic effect, though if you’re of the chubby cheek persuasion, as I am, you might hang up on your mom mid-call. Oops.

The 2-Megapixel camera application is fairly improved, with one-touch HelioUP, and I do mean one-touch; it’s launched from the right touchkey. This lets you upload recent photos to flickr or videos to YouTube. While the device lacks the Oceans exclusive YouTube client, the HelioUP is actually an easier way to go.

Another neat feature is that this is for sure a Helio device. Not only do I mean the interface is there, but there are a few Helio-centric touches that one might miss at first, notably the T9 keypad is a clone of the Ocean’s.

While I wish it had QWERTY, you can say I wish everything had QWERTY, so if that’s not an issue, there’s no reason not to consider this phone when it hits in a few days.

If you’re in LA or NYC, you can get it at your local Helio boutique store, but you won’t see it on display, you’ll have to ask for it by name, under-the-counter style. Tell them CrunchGear sent you. Or you can wait for it’s national launch which should be sometime next month for (we hear) $150.