Quote:
Originally Posted by
FineWine 
OK, I'm in a peculiar situation. My wife has a blackberry through work, so we didn't desperately need a smartphone "right this second" and never got around to getting one. At home we have a "feature" phone (some lame Samsung or another). But the thing is, we pay nothing to use the blackberry, and our private cell is on a legacy program through Verizon, for $29.95 a month - with taxes, that's a final cost of $38.00 give or take 30 cents (300 anytime minutes, 100 text messages). But, I always thought it would be nice to get an iPhone, or simply upgrade to another plan. So Sunday we went to a Verizon store and talked to two different associates. Tell you what - we had a lot of laughs. See, you can't get a plan as cheap as ours nowadays - with ANY phone, they advised us to stick to what we have because we are grandfathered in, and the plan doesn't exist otherwise. And the iPhone? Forget it! No way. Way, way too costly. Sticking with the free blackberry - sure it sucks, getting on the www. is poky, but you know what? It works, and it's free. I also have an iPod Touch 4G, and between that, my sh|tty Samsung feature phone and the blackberry, we're set. All for $38 a month, total.
My next move is to look at other options. What's the deal with Virgin? I heard good things. How's the coverage?
Coverage is great. I have the Optimus V. Basically, you get the Sprint network without roaming capability. Hasn't been a problem for me. I travel between Ohio and Massachusetts through West Virginia and I don't have any major problems.
To get the most out of it, I rooted the Optimus and installed a custom 2.3 gingerbread firmware, which enables WiFi tethering (awesome). There is lots of support for the Optimus V on the XDA forums and Android Forums. I overclock to 806 MHz
There were a couple days where 3G or data totally stopped working for a while, but that was very rare and I have seen that same kind of glitch happen with a friend's iPhone 3GS on AT&T, too.
The nice thing is the flexibility. If you run out of those 300 minutes, you can restart your month early, top up and pay 10cents/minute, or just forget about it and use Skype and keep on using your unlimited internet
Remember, those 300 minutes have no mobile to mobile, night/weekend, and if you call Voicemail, that costs minutes too. I have yet to use all 300 of my minutes though.
Best choices are Optimus V or a Blackberry. Come on, a Blackberry for $25/month, that's insane. The other keyboard-equipped samsung Android phone isn't so great.
Remember the Optimus V has an ARM6 processor so
no flash support
See my above post, which was probably more angry than it had to be. Some guys on the XDA forums or somewhere have the Netflix app without the device checking software that prevents you from using it on unsupported Android phones. I have no idea why Netflix did that but I guess they just didn't test it on everything.
I think Virgin is worth a try. If you hate it, you are only out $25, you can just sell the phone on eBay! Or...well I guess you could just return it too haha
Oh yeah...all my custom stuff probably got rid of the Virgin activation program, plus Virgin's stupid carrier programs that everyone puts on phones (my friend's Verizon phone won't let you get rid of the Blockbuster app. Really???). I know I can get it back to factory state but I haven't tried it and forget how :-)
If you are comfortable with rooting, custom firmware, geeky stuff, etc, the phone is AMAZING. If not, it's still a GREAT 2.2 Android phone and the Optimus V is pretty new, and pretty solid, it's your typical reliable LG phone without the bells and whistles.
Oh yeah, it comes with a 2 GB SD card, and not much onboard storage. Good amount of RAM though (512mb i think)
