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Although Helio's Ocean isn't officially a smartphone (closed OS and all) it sure is smart. Today, for example, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) plans to release a YouTube application that rivals, and in many way exceeds, Apple's much touted - but pretty bare bones - software access the popular video sharing site from the iPhone.

As with Apple's YouTube application, Helio's is free. Since it is new, you’ll have to download it to your mobile handset, though.

YouTube for the Ocean includes a number of personalization features Apple's software lacks. So you can login to your own account to view videos you've uploaded, access your playlists, rate videos and leave comments.

And, unlike with the iPhone, you can shoot and upload videos to YouTube from the Ocean and, if you like, upload videos as comments to a video already on YouTube. You can even geotag videos with the Ocean's GPS feature. Geotagging tells those who view your video exactly where it was taken.

More on Helio
Launched in the spring of 2006, Helio, a joint venture between Earthlink and South Korean mobile operator SK Telecom, positions itself as the MVNO for the young and hip. Overall, Helio targets tech-savvy 18 to 34 year olds through its partnership with the mega-social-networking site MySpace.

Helio is named after Copernican's 16th Century Heliocentric theory of the Sun as center of the universe. As a brand, it is supposed to conjure how central mobility - the mobile phone in particular - is in young people's lives.

Unlike traditional carriers, Helio - as an MVNO - doesn't own a physical cellular network. Rather, it rents and resells spectrum from these 'real' wireless operators as its own voice and data services.

As of the third quarter, Helio sported about 140,000 subscribers, a drop in the bucket of the tens of millions of customers for major mobile operators like AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint.

See links below for more on the Ocean and Helio.