New Virgin Mobile phone for May!!!!!!!

[lifeblows10]

My GPS was pretty horrible until I flashed CM7. I instantly picked up a ton of satellites with strengths 30+

I've had CM7 on it since TG was able to get 3G on it. Nothing has helped my GPS.

 

[andid]

I have the optimus v, im wondering if it would really make that much of a difference to get this phone, i dont wanna just throw away a hundred bucks,and somehow i doubt it will be that cheap, my guess is it will be 200.

 

[thebryceee]

I've had CM7 on it since TG was able to get 3G on it. Nothing has helped my GPS.

CM7 or CM7 reloaded?

 

[lifeblows10]

CM7 or CM7 reloaded?

Both.

 

[Droidula]

well t-mobile prepaid does have the bring your own phone option... straight talk as well

I had been planning to go with t-mobile, but that plan seems very deceptive to me. I realized that with the $50 plan, you only got 100 MB of 4G data, which I was fine with. But I was under the impression that after that, you stayed with 3G. Turns out, after 100 MB of 3G data, you are further reduced to 2G speeds. Are you kidding? This plan is ridiculous, and these details are very buried in the fine print. I had to call and speak with a manager to get the exact details, and he was reluctant to tell me, instead saying that every plan was meant for the needs of certain people, and then tried selling me a more expensive plan.

So now I'm thinking of just buying my own phone, either to flash to Boost, Virgin Mobile, or for straight talk use. I'm just not sure what the best option is. How is your straight talk service? Any delayed texts or outages or things like that? That is happening every week right now with Boost. I have extremely slow internet, and am not sure if it's just Boost, or the Marquee...since other people on Boost don't seem to have this issue. But if I flashed a phone to Boost and it was still slow, I'd have to flash again to Virgin.

 

[lou61166]

I had been planning to go with t-mobile, but that plan seems very deceptive to me. I realized that with the $50 plan, you only got 100 MB of 4G data, which I was fine with. But I was under the impression that after that, you stayed with 3G. Turns out, after 100 MB of 3G data, you are further reduced to 2G speeds. Are you kidding? This plan is ridiculous, and these details are very buried in the fine print. I had to call and speak with a manager to get the exact details, and he was reluctant to tell me, instead saying that every plan was meant for the needs of certain people, and then tried selling me a more expensive plan.

So now I'm thinking of just buying my own phone, either to flash to Boost, Virgin Mobile, or for straight talk use. I'm just not sure what the best option is. How is your straight talk service? Any delayed texts or outages or things like that? That is happening every week right now with Boost. I have extremely slow internet, and am not sure if it's just Boost, or the Marquee...since other people on Boost don't seem to have this issue. But if I flashed a phone to Boost and it was still slow, I'd have to flash again to Virgin.

It is not possible to use a non Virgin Mobile phone on their network.

 

[Droidula]

It is not possible to use a non Virgin Mobile phone on their network.

Oh...I had someone tell me they were able to do it.

 

[marc12868]

Oh...I had someone tell me they were able to do it.

I'm not going to lie and say it isn't possible, but it is highly illegal and against the federal law, because in order to do it you would have to mess with the ESN and MEID which is against the federal law. If you didn't know this know you do, not to sound mean or anything, just an FYI. There are companies that can legitimately flash phones though like Cricket and I believe Boost will too, but VM doesn't legally allow outside phones. Just be careful.

 

[Droidula]

I'm not going to lie and say it isn't possible, but it is highly illegal and against the federal law, because in order to do it you would have to mess with the ESN and MEID which is against the federal law. If you didn't know this know you do, not to sound mean or anything, just an FYI. There are companies that can legitimately flash phones though like Cricket and I believe Boost will too, but VM doesn't legally allow outside phones. Just be careful.

Ah ok, I didn't know it was such an offense to flash a phone to virgin.

 

[zachavm]

Ah ok, I didn't know it was such an offense to flash a phone to virgin.

Just an FYI, it's not a law made to prevent you from taking a phone to a carrier. It was actually implemented to protect you. If you've ever seen the movie Enemy of the State with Will Smith, they did an ESN copy to enable them to listen in to another person's phone calls. If you can replicate a phones ESN onto another phone, you can pose as them and do all sorts of nasty things.

Unfortunatly, it's the only way to get a non-virgin mobile phone onto VM. I know it sucks, but the good news is that things are starting to change. The pre-paid boom is happening and IMHO will slowly take over the market. Straight Talk allows you to use ANY AT&T, T-Mobile, or unlocked SIM phone on their network. That's a HUGE step forward! Thanks to the pre-paid market, we're finally seeing true competition in the mobile industry. I don't want to lose my $25/month plan so I'm willing to suffer a crappier phone with VM, but when the Evo V hits I'll probably be fine for the forseeable future.

 

[Seanette]

But does Straight Talk have better customer service than the nightmare I had with Tracfone, since Tracfone owns ST?

 

[andid]

so you could use an unlocked iphone with straight talk?

 

[zachavm]

so you could use an unlocked iphone with straight talk?

Doesn't even need to be unlocked. They will provide an AT&T sim. It's confirmed to work with the iPhone 4S.

 

[Petrah]

But does Straight Talk have better customer service than the nightmare I had with Tracfone, since Tracfone owns ST?

When you call support, with some mobile carriers you aren't actually speaking to someone within the physical offices of the mobile phone company. You're speaking with a company that the mobile carrier pays to help you with your phone and their mobile services, which are unfortunately sometimes somewhere overseas.

 

[Seanette]

When you call support, with some mobile carriers you aren't actually speaking to someone within the physical offices of the mobile phone company. You're speaking with a company that the mobile carrier pays to help you with your phone and their mobile services, which are unfortunately sometimes somewhere overseas.

Painfully aware of this. Also painfully aware that my limited experience with Tracfone (ca. 2005) included having to spend what seemed like my whole weekend on the phone, being given contradictory or blatantly false information, while trying to get a very basic feature (voice mail) to work, while I was in a job-hunting phase of my life. The only way I managed to get that function was someone on a Yahoo mailing list providing a phone number to get me directly to second level. This featured a tech who actually spoke enough English to understand the customer and actually had a clue what he was talking about. Throw in a confusing price structure for pay-as-you-go (cost per minute varied by how many minutes were purchased at a time, making it a bit confusing to keep reasonable track of my costs), and I switched to VM as soon as I could.

I do hope Straight Talk has learned from Tracfone's screwups and started hiring competent techs, but I'm not optimistic.

 

[zachavm]

This makes me want to punch VM USA, really hard. What the f**k is wrong with Virgin Mobile USA? Meanwhile we get shitty phones that are outdated in specs by generations, VM Canada is getting brand new, top of the line phones (Galaxy Nexus, anyone?), and LTE 4G. What the f**k is wrong with VM USA? I'm moving to T-Mobile, soon, hopefully. For the same price as the overpriced $30 plan Virgin Mobile has, you can get a decent plan with 5 GB 4G and 300 minutes from T-Mobile (with no throttling at 2.5 GB).

Was VM ever a decent company? Now that I think about it, all I can remember is horrible customer support, hardware defects, and an overall frusturating experience. To top that off, the charger port in my Triumph decided to commit suicide (probably to leave VM) so my Triumph can barely charge.

How do they seriously expect their customers to remain when all they crap out is subpar, defective phones, and overpriced plans? There's a reason that the top ROM developers for this phone (Tickerguy and Isaac) gave up and moved to another carrier. I hate to break it to you, but for most people, sticking with VM is overpriced. When my Triumph finally dies (or blows up, knowing VM), I'll likely move to another carrier, with decently priced plans, and phones that don't have an 80% defect rate. The Triumph seems like it had so much potential, which VM decided to squander.

/rage

TL;DR: DIE, VIRGIN MOBILE USA, DIE!!!!

wait, T-Mobile only has 100 minutes not 300 right? What are you talking about with 300?

 

[MediocreBadGuy]

5GB of 4G and GrooveIP is not a bad deal

 

[Petrah]

Painfully aware of this. Also painfully aware that my limited experience with Tracfone (ca. 2005) included having to spend what seemed like my whole weekend on the phone, being given contradictory or blatantly false information, while trying to get a very basic feature (voice mail) to work, while I was in a job-hunting phase of my life. The only way I managed to get that function was someone on a Yahoo mailing list providing a phone number to get me directly to second level. This featured a tech who actually spoke enough English to understand the customer and actually had a clue what he was talking about. Throw in a confusing price structure for pay-as-you-go (cost per minute varied by how many minutes were purchased at a time, making it a bit confusing to keep reasonable track of my costs), and I switched to VM as soon as I could.

I do hope Straight Talk has learned from Tracfone's screwups and started hiring competent techs, but I'm not optimistic.

I feel for ya, dang. I think Id of lost all my hair with those first phone calls!

 

[amk2795]

I like it ;__;
I'm waiting for a new HTC to be added to the lineup because I love my Wildfire as much as I hate it.
I can't downgrade from the HTC platform, I'm spoiled by how pretty and customizable it is. Hell, my phone skin is turquoise right now, and all I had to do was download it from HTC Hub. Can't give that up, but can't stand that I can never clear more than ~21MB max on my phone.
Bring me a nice, big HTC and I'll make the effort to save up for it.

But I do like this phone. A little bit like an iDevice look.

 

[a5pe4]

5GB of 4G and GrooveIP is not a bad deal

Would you need two different phone numbers then?

 

[thebryceee]

Would you need two different phone numbers then?

Yeah. Google gives you a free number. You can port your number to Google Voice but you'll lose your VM account.

 

[MacFett]

Yeah. Google gives you a free number. You can port your number to Google Voice but you'll lose your VM account.

Except they're talking about T-Mobile and probably wouldn't need his Virgin Mobile number any longer.

 

[sisu]

I like it ;__;
I'm waiting for a new HTC to be added to the lineup because I love my Wildfire as much as I hate it.
I can't downgrade from the HTC platform, I'm spoiled by how pretty and customizable it is. Hell, my phone skin is turquoise right now, and all I had to do was download it from HTC Hub. Can't give that up, but can't stand that I can never clear more than ~21MB max on my phone.
Bring me a nice, big HTC and I'll make the effort to save up for it.

But I do like this phone. A little bit like an iDevice look.

Did you ever root your phone? Or you have tons of apps? I ended up rooting my phone, and finally put in a custom ROM. I now a plenty of space.

I understand customer service is important to many, maybe most people. But not to me. For a typical problem, I find it easier to Google it than try getting help from some call center guy reading from a script. Very rarely I have to call CS for something that only they can do. Maybe because I have been lucky having reliable phone, idk.

I do love the VM plan, even at $35/month. And I love the Wildfire S! It's a smaller size, but that does have it's pros too. My co-worker, having a bigger phone, said he would prefer my smaller size phone over his. I love how I can hold the phone in my hand so easily when I'm running. I don't watch movies so much so I don't see a lot of pros with a bigger screen.

I can see the point of VM having low-end phones, and that works fine with me But yeah, I agree they should have a line of higher end phones too.

 

[septembersrain]

I feel like they just released this phone in order to go ahead and retire the Optimus V.
Since they are in the talks for 4G, They wouldn't release a high spec 3G phone at this point.

They will have a better line up soon but the transition of Sprint from WiMAX to LTE and the MVNO's receiving WiMAX, It's in the works. Hang tight.

 

[septembersrain]

I'm not going to lie and say it isn't possible, but it is highly illegal and against the federal law, because in order to do it you would have to mess with the ESN and MEID which is against the federal law. If you didn't know this know you do, not to sound mean or anything, just an FYI. There are companies that can legitimately flash phones though like Cricket and I believe Boost will too, but VM doesn't legally allow outside phones. Just be careful.

I don't agree with "Flashing" a phone to a different network.
You always risk the chance of ruining that phone by limiting it's functionality.
A lot of people come to Boost from Cricket because of that.
They end up flashing a great phone and suddenly can't get picture messages, text messages, random force closures, etc.
For me I find that you are paying for an unlimited service on a phone that can't even function in an unlimited way, It's not consumer beneficial.
Not to mention if the flash fails, You are stuck with a brick and they make you agree to say it's not their fault!

That's just a big fat no for me.

Though I do with Sprint would "Open" up their phones so we can use all of their models on our service. Though that would be pre-LTE models as we won't be able to carry LTE on our network. Soon we'll be able to hold the older WiMAX models though.