Virgin Mobile AWE... thoughts?

[MrLaserman]

I see Walmart has the Virgin Mobile AWE for $50

is it worth buying as a "back up" or "second" smartphone? Thinking $35 plan.

Currently have a smartphone as my main phone and for a back up I have the Entro on the $20 plan.

Thanks!

 

[kate]

How often a month do you use your backup phone? If you don't use it much, would it be worth it to almost double your monthly payment for a secondary phone?

 

[MrLaserman]

between my wife and I we use the back up phone maybe two or three times per month. Not a lot but I'm thinking since between us there is only one smartphone it would also be a way to ease my wife into a smartphone little by little. Her main phone is not much more than the Entro is. I already have a smartphone and a back up basic phone... she just has her main flip phone. The Entro has done a good job for us... once my wife's main phone was down for two weeks and she used the Entro for that two weeks and it did a good job. So more than JUST a back up... I'd like to get her used to a smartphone. The money is not a problem. I guess I could have given more info... sorry!

 

[aml1025]

The Awe has suffered from some uneven quality issues - but the one I got in November for my teenage daughter has performed without issues so far. (In fact, some of her iPhone-using friends have been impressed with her ease of use.)

Also, the Target in my neighborhood has the Awe for $39.99. You can hardly go wrong for that price.

 

[MrLaserman]

guess I should check Target before running off to Walmart! thanks!

 

[mogelijk]

guess I should check Target before running off to Walmart! thanks!

It seems to me that Target is having better sales on Virgin Mobile phones/phone cards than Walmart. I think a lot of it is that Walmart is tied to Straight Talk, have the exclusive on the $30 T-Mobile plan, Walmart Mobile, and are now supposed to be getting an exclusive AT&T $45 prepaid plan.

 

[MrLaserman]

The Targets in my area do not have the AWE for that low price... only Walmart has it for $49.50 BUT I just saw Virgin's web site advertising it for $39.95 for just today (Thursday 4/24) and tomorrow (Friday 4/25) or while supplies last. Would rather have the F3 though now that I've read up on them both. Best I see the F3 for is $99 at Best Buy and thats on sale.

 

[TDOW]

The Targets in my area do not have the AWE for that low price... only Walmart has it for $49.50 BUT I just saw Virgin's web site advertising it for $39.95 for just today (Thursday 4/24) and tomorrow (Friday 4/25) or while supplies last. Would rather have the F3 though now that I've read up on them both. Best I see the F3 for is $99 at Best Buy and thats on sale.

I would spend the extra money on the F3. We have 3 Awes in this household. Mine suddenly lost the ability to make calls from inside our house (after 3 months of service). Went back and forth with Virgin (tower outage/no tower outage, etc.), got them to replace it, and the replacement did not work either. Sent replacement back, activated an old phone in the meantime, and got them to send another replacement and this one works. Both of the other devices worked fine the whole time, but I had two that had glaring antenna problems.

In the middle of all this back and forth with Virgin, I bought an LG F3 on MetroPCS. It had a smaller screen, but for the few days I played around with it, I really liked how responsive it was. Sadly, MetroPCS was unable to port a Minneapolis area code over to their service in southern California so I returned the phone because I refuse to give up the phone number I have had for 15 years.