okay...who has a virgin mobile branded phone without the sprint logo

[thebryceee]

I ordered my Evo V preorder from Best Buy the first day it was available, and finally received it today. It is VM branded. No Sprint on the front, HTC and Virgin logos on the back. I'm not activating until this weekend, but I report any issues then.

Pics or it didn't happen.

 

[jr2673]

My wife has VM branded black (on battery cover) and i have a sprint branded purple (best buy exclusive) both are working in all conditions identically. only thing is her power button is slightly easier to press. both run identical software. both feel exactly the same. please stop feeding the hysteria; sprint branded ones work just as well (i presonally like pretending i'm on sprint tho ;D)

Hhaha you are on sprint LMAO

 

[Stalyn]

My is vm branded.

 

[nexgenasian]

Hhaha you are on sprint LMAO

I know Virgin uses Sprints' network and is their prepaid brand. But it's like having a Lexus branded Camry.

 

[hollap]

Pics or it didn't happen.

I will try and get them posted tonight!

 

[savage321]

If you get one that works, it will be no different.
Mine runs great.

Flash or reflash makes ZERO difference, the only variable was how well it was flashed. The early ones were done by untrained people. Some worked, some didn't. It's the same as flashing a rom.

Designed for Sprint? Come on.
What do you think Virgin is. There is nothing different or magical about Virgin compared to Sprint. In fact, you can flash almost any CDMA phone over and it will work perfectly fine, other than MMS. I did it with an Evo 4g, it ran perfect. I know people with Evo Shifts, Marquee's, and more all on Virgin that run perfect.

Go ahead and keep thinking there will be some magical difference, but you are only fooling yourself. Will there be less issues? Sure because it will be flashed by HTC in a controled environment where they are more likely to have better quality control, but if it works, it works. Doesn't matter who flashes it.

I just want mine to be flashed properly then. Thats what I ment. Mine must have been incorrectly flashed. I dont think there will be a magical difference I just think the Virgin branded ones will be flashed properly.

 

[smartphone45]

You know their should be truth in advertising, the evo v phones shown on Best Buy or Rat Shack or for that matter any other retailer don't show the sprint branded logo on the phones pictured on their website....even most if not all the video's demonstrating the evo v phone have no sprint branded logo...why is that? Sure there are no complaints from the reviewers because they are VM branded phones...and I believe there will be tighter QC controls on the VM branded phones...thats just my opinion especially because I have since returned a defective phone back to Rat Shack...and guess what, you got it.....sprint branded...

 

[Jaxmoto]

If anything the newly manufactured units might be functionally equivalent but manufactured with cheaper sourced parts. Doesn't require any changes in manufacturing or line changes. For example changing the Wolffson DAC in the Evo with a lesser component could easily save $.25 per unit and not require recertification. Just another thought, with some of the new products and features suddenly appearing on Virgin who knows,this might be Sprint's way of testing the waters for a possible return of Sprint's branded prepay service. It would certainly save money having everything under one roof. Eliminate an awful lot of redundancy. The half billion paid for VMUSA pales in comparison to the 35 billion Crapple contract. Time will tell.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.....

Manufacturers are not going to put higher quality parts in a product after they have been in production. They are going to move to make small changes to save money, especially when they are having to renegotiate sales contracts and lower the price they set for the entire unit.

For example... resistors and capacitors made in China have very bad reputations. They get made one place, sent to another, labeled there, sent to another company, get certified under shady conditions, then sometimes even get sent to another place and re-labeled to be a completely different item. Many companies have started taking pride lately in saying they use Japanese produced resistors/capacitors since Japanese products may be more expensive but are known for quality.

A single small change like that could mean the difference in a million Evo's failing after 6 months or not.

The EVO 3D is a solid phone. There is no reason for them to make changes unless it means cost savings, and that means the possibility of lower quality.

In the phone you have hardware, software and the radio (part of both). If the hardware is the same then there would 100% be no difference in a phone flashed from Sprint and a phone flashed to VM from the factory.

 

[OverByter]

You know their should be truth in advertising, the evo v phones shown on Best Buy or Rat Shack or for that matter any other retailer don't show the sprint branded logo on the phones pictured on their website....even most if not all the video's demonstrating the evo v phone have no sprint branded logo...why is that? Sure there are no complaints from the reviewers because they are VM branded phones...and I believe there will be tighter QC controls on the VM branded phones...thats just my opinion especially because I have since returned a defective phone back to Rat Shack...and guess what, you got it.....sprint branded...

Well it stands to reason that any problems showing up on this phone are Sprint branded. It's because their are next to none that are Virgin branded, makes it very difficult to have a problem with a phone that doesn't yet exist in the wild in any numbers. Come on ppl, stop looking for conspiracies. HTC manufactures phones for every major carrier in the world, do you really think that the QC for a Virgin branded product will be better than one that has Sprint silk screened on it?

 

[cutterjohn]

Ding ding ding, we have a winner.....

Manufacturers are not going to put higher quality parts in a product after they have been in production. They are going to move to make small changes to save money, especially when they are having to renegotiate sales contracts and lower the price they set for the entire unit.

For example... resistors and capacitors made in China have very bad reputations. They get made one place, sent to another, labeled there, sent to another company, get certified under shady conditions, then sometimes even get sent to another place and re-labeled to be a completely different item. Many companies have started taking pride lately in saying they use Japanese produced resistors/capacitors since Japanese products may be more expensive but are known for quality.

It's usually just a design modification that is functionally equivalent but more cost effective.

As to components: CAPS! Taiwanese tried to ripoff off the electrolytic formula from a Japanese company back in the early 2000s but grabbed the wrong one, so all their caps were crap but marketed as equivalent to Japanese caps yet the Taiwanese ones would fail after a few years. There were alot of motherboard and other electronics recalls because of those crap caps.

I can only imagine that the situation has become worse.

Resistors are too trivial to screw up badly unless they fail to meet marked tolerances and the design is hypersensitive...

My Sprint branded V has been fine, but I only got around to getting it activated last night, having to go through two different desks as initially it would just error-131 on me when they tried to activate it and going through online didn't work. Made one call so far(had to recharge again as I was playing around with it a bit even unactivated) and I got alot of echo but once I get it charged up again I chew through some minutes checking that. No error 64s that I've seen here, just that 131 while trying to activate.

 

[Leslie Ann]

As to components: CAPS! Taiwanese tried to ripoff off the electrolytic formula from a Japanese company back in the early 2000s but grabbed the wrong one, so all their caps were crap but marketed as equivalent to Japanese caps yet the Taiwanese ones would fail after a few years. There were alot of motherboard and other electronics recalls because of those crap caps.

The formula was incomplete.

Also, some boards lasted weeks at most. While most caps simply burst and leaked, I saw one cap inside a power supply actually explode and dent the power supply.

I still run into these boards and parts on occasion. The bad caps stayed in the parts chain for years.

 

[Integraoligist]

+1 for Sprint branded phone, just picked it up from Target about an hour ago. No VM logo on the phone whatsoever.

 

[hollap]

Virgin Branded from Best Buy, pre-ordered online and sent direct to me:

 

[raysurrx7]

Virgin Branded from Best Buy, pre-ordered online and sent direct to me:

Hmmmm...can someone help a newbie here...I saw my pics in the upload manager correctly...any ideas? Trying to post from my pc.

Try using a image hosting website like tinypic. use the generated link for forums when you upload.

 

[G19]

Thanks for posting pics Hollap

 

[raysurrx7]

I wonder if I ever need to exchange my phone they will let me keep my plain HTC backing?

 

[KryptoNyte]

I wonder if I ever need to exchange my phone they will let me keep my plain HTC backing?

I suppose. If they didn't, you could purchase a back cover without the Virgin logo on it for, what, 6 bucks.

http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-v-4g/559120-accessories-what-have-you-found.html

 

[KryptoNyte]

Thanks for posting pics Hollap

Yep, thanks. Good to know that you can basically just grab a new backplate for this thing to completely eliminate the VM branding.

 

[Leslie Ann]

Be careful with the covers...

The ring around the camera is metal, not plastic, and as you pull the cover off, it tries to collapse this at the speaker. The new one I ordered was badly bent, and while dealing with the seller I found that mine was starting to bend as well. Mine was very subtle, but if you look, odds are, yours has probably started to as well.

While pulling them off, it seems we try to eliminate damage around the camera buttons, and in turn put pressure on the trim ring. The speaker area being the weak point, it gives first.

Here is a pic of my new purple cover before I straightened it so you can see what I mean. A bit of massaging with my fingers put both back in shape.

 

[cutterjohn]

The formula was incomplete.

Also, some boards lasted weeks at most. While most caps simply burst and leaked, I saw one cap inside a power supply actually explode and dent the power supply.

I still run into these boards and parts on occasion. The bad caps stayed in the parts chain for years.

Ah, but you should realize that most caps in these devices are simply ceramic SMT so it's an entirely different thing...

...and actually from the information that I got it was that they had stolen the wrong formula not an incomplete one...

(Most of the "bad" ones that I saw just wouldn't hold charge after a few months to a year or so... some leaked, but never saw one that magic smoked...)

 

[agianne]

Virgin Branded from Best Buy, pre-ordered online and sent direct to me

Thanks for posting those pics.

Since you're one of the first to get a Virgin Mobile branded phone, we need you to please tear your phone apart and laboriously identify each and every component by vendor and part number so we can compare them to those in a "Sprint" branded version.

As long as you've got the thing torn apart, please check each of the chips so we can verify that the high quality firmware of the chips in the Sprint version haven't been replaced by low quality, environmentally damaging firmware created by child laborers working in dark, unsafe conditions.

I hear there may be some bad capacitors in the supply chain that could have potentially made it into these phones, so be careful!

 

[Tazzlest]

I too have a virgin branded phone and no issues on my end thusfar *fingers crossed* my previous 2 sprint branded phones constantly would undergo freezing and reboot loops for no apparent reason and the screen would not respond majority of the time...that was from Radioshack...Got my refund from them purchased from Bestbuy the VM branded one and everything is working flawlessly

 

[Leslie Ann]

Ah, but you should realize that most caps in these devices are simply ceramic SMT so it's an entirely different thing...

Incomplete or wrong, still leads to the same end.
I dealt with dozens of the damn things.

As for them being smt... doesn't matter, they can still use cheap components inside. We never know when it will happen again, or a repeat of the Nvidia 8400 catastrophe or Sony battery issue.

Buying better quality doesn't necessarily make you immune, but but does help, as opposed to buying something you KNOW is 100% bottom of the barrel for parts.

 

[Tazzlest]

Here is a pic of my VM branded Evo V in the Ballistic HC case

 

[notebooko]

Thanks for posting those pics.

Since you're one of the first to get a Virgin Mobile branded phone, we need you to please tear your phone apart and laboriously identify each and every component by vendor and part number so we can compare them to those in a "Sprint" branded version.

As long as you've got the thing torn apart, please check each of the chips so we can verify that the high quality firmware of the chips in the Sprint version haven't been replaced by low quality, environmentally damaging firmware created by child laborers working in dark, unsafe conditions.

I hear there may be some bad capacitors in the supply chain that could have potentially made it into these phones, so be careful!

Haha! Thanks for the laugh!

Does anyone know when Virgin/Boost Mobile retailers (the actual separate Boost Mobile stores) are going to start selling the Evo V 4G? It seems like its been an awfully long time that they haven't gotten them. Maybe they have been waiting for the Virgin branded ones to come out?