Virgin Mobile - LG Optimus V No-Contract Mobile Phone - Black

I bought this phone/plan while waiting to decide [When the iPhone4S, DroidRAZR, etc phones were announced] what carrier and phone would give me the most phone/plan for my dollar. Honestly, I'm putting it up for sale as I write this... with sad thoughts, glancing over as I un-root / flash it back to stock. I have used over thirty smartphones, and I must say, this one is a 'keeper' for most. The construction is solid [surviving drops in the toilet, puke, falls from a moving car, dogs, dance-floors, and jealous lovers]. The graphic responsiveness and interface smoothness [from the fast GPU] is nothing short of AMAZING considering the low specs [on paper]. The display is high quality, regardless of the low resolution[fits this display size perfectly]. There is more than enough RAM to run multiple applications without memory errors. The phone gets better signal than my Motorola Photon and Nexus S 4G... put together. The WiFi reception is solid for a phone of this size, and the 3G speed tested faster than my friend's EVO running on 3G. It comes with a solid power charger/data cable combo that is still holding up, and memory card. The buttons on the front are tactile and great alternatives to the power button. the speakerphone is actually amazing for an Android device. The headphone slot is perfect [on the top left so you can have your phone screen down in your pocket with headphones on listening to music]. Honestly... If I didn't develop mobile sites and apps, I'd hate myself for not getting the maximum use out of this thing. I bet it would never die. So long... the only LG phone I would ever recommend to anyone, ever.

I just switched from AT&T to Virgin Mobile because this LG optimus V is the first quality android handset they have and secondly their plans are amazing. No more contracts, dirt cheap plans with unlimited data and texts. I went from an HTC Aria to this LG Optimus and they are direct competitors. My Aria was rooted and updated to 2.2 to enable wifi tether and other updates. My thoughts are the HTC has hands down the best android user interface. It looks great and more elegant then the LG's. These are things that can be customized and fixed later so a minor drawback. The LG has a higher build quality and 20% larger battery. its a slightly larger and heavier phone too. There is a metal band going around the outer edge that reinforces the handset, the LCD is also slightly recessed into the phone which protects it from drops or accidents. Virgin mobile data sevice is much slower then AT&T. Average speed tests around town I average 15-35KB a sec downloads, some places up to 90KB. AT&T I got 170KB almost everywhere. Still I dont care because between my wife and I I am saving $70 a month, no contract, and my data needs doesnt require streaming video. So far I highly recommend this phone and virgin mobile

I got this baby on sale for $99, and I gotta say this little phone rocks! Everything is good about it! great camcorder and camera ( although no flash). The internet is available everywhere you go with the 3g network, with fast loading time, and even faster with the wi-fi. You can get any app under the sun with android. The screen is so beautiful and bright ( even in sunlight). the voice texting is really cool! And plenty of accessories available on the net. Only one bad thing... is the battery life is short ( as they say), but chargers and xtra batteries are so cheap online, it's really not an issue. Oh! did I mention NO contract! Buy it! you will be happy!

No problems out of the box was. I was able to activate phone the first time. and Best Buy app store is great . The battery was the only issue 6hrs max but i purchased two extended batteries (only needed one!) It now runs about 40 hrs on a charge. Size and weight not a issue.

I had no intention of buying a new phone, but when my company moved and I had no service for most of my waking hours it was time for a change. It decided to look in the world of smart phones. Being a lover of apple products I naturally thought of the of the iPhone, but I was not eager to commit to 80 dollars+ a month for two years. I then discovered this is not just the scenario for the iPhone but for every smart phone from a major carrier. I could afford it but I could not justify the excessive monthly bill. I barely use my phone. My monthly minutes rarely go over 100 and I wasn't sure how much smart I'd need or use. It seemed like I'd be throwing a lot of money away, but I needed a new phone. I knew there had to be a answer and turns out this phone and Virgin Mobile are the perfect solution for me. 300 minutes is plenty and with unlimited data I could test out the world of smart phones with no commitment. Porting my phone number only took one 10 minute phone call and 3 hrs waiting. A quick visit to Virgin mobile's web site to set up auto pay and I was good to go. Now I see what I've been missing and it's great. I love being able to stream Pandora at work or browse the web while I'm stuck shopping with my wife or find the cheapest gas price wherever I'm at. The best part is I can do all this paying less per month than I did with my old dumb phone and I get better coverage. I highly recommend this phone for anyone wanting a no strings way to test the smart phone waters. Sure it can't do everything the high-powered phones do but for me phone does just about everything I want it to. Flash support would be nice but the youtube app works really well and the iPhone doesn't support flash either. Now for the battery tip. When I first got this phone the battery would fully discharge in just a few hours. It would almost completely drain overnight on standby! The phone felt hot, and it would take hours and hours to charge. I thought I must have a defective battery or phone. I did some research and it seems likely that this phone may suffer from a software bug where the radio constantly searching for a signal. This kills the battery. The quick solution is to put the phone into airplane mode for 15 seconds or so and then go back to normal. After doing this my battery life was GREATLY improved. The phone doesn't feel hot anymore and it went from the battery draining 80% overnight to only 10%. Anyone interested in the specifics check out these links. http://androidforums.com/lg-optimus-v/271220-optimus-v-defective-battery-how-kill-apps.html http://forum.androidcentral.com/optimus-v/57943-excessive-battery-drain-even-standby.html This needs to be done every time you reboot the phone. If Virgin is listening, fix this problem or you may be getting a lot of returned phones. Don't let people miss out on this great product and value. If you get good coverage from sprint in your area and you're thinking of jumping into the world of smart phones or just like saving money, I highly recommend this phone.

This is a great phone if you are looking for a a inexpensive smartphone available with affordable plans, it is however not for everyone. Just a few of the great features about it are, that it comes with froyo 2.2 (one step back from the most recent version of android available for phones, tablets are using honeycomb) and gingerbread has been promised to be released for this phone as a upgrade via LG, while some claim to have some lag, it must be a hit or miss type issue cause I rarely note any lag with my phone unless I have several apps open at one time and even then its barely noticeable, Nearly all applications are compatible with this phone minus anything requiring flash or flash player (you can watch video via skyfire browser (one time charge of 2.99 via market for a license key to have a flash player converter via the browser) and youtube(which is free and already pre-installed). The camera works well for what I need it for (it is lacking a flash so forget night pics or video's but you can still use a flashlight apps via the screen being lit), such as scanning bar-codes and such because of the auto focus which alot of entry level androids are missing. Now the things that may bug some people is the phone is small when compared to alot of the newer phone's on paid plans that come free or a small charge or the more expensive phone on prepaid plans (such as the new triumph). While this phone will be fine for the average user, if you do want this phone and have large finger, you definetly want to go keyboard shopping in the market and you want to always use landscape mode to type anything unless you plan to use the back space icon alot, Internal memory on this phone also leaves alot to be desired, you will have about 150MB of usable space when you receive the phone new and while that may not be a problem for most users, some will fine that is easy to fill up especially on app's that don't allow them to be moved to SD card (and to be honest even if they move the left data in the system storage will still fill up that memory quickly). I highly recommend using a larger SD card and looking into the options of getting applications like link2sd on your phone, if you are big into apps. Battery is not the greatest but under normal use days with a power widget set up on a home screen and the screen dimmed, gps turned off when not in use, wifi turn off when not using it as well as bluetooth, you should get decent battery life, however, if you have alot of apps going in the background such as nav and are playing angry birds in between multiple calls and texts, don't expect too much time away from a USB, cigarette lighter or a/c outlet. In conclusion and having tested and looked at alot of other android devices (thunderbolt, triumph,droid charge) This is not a top of the line smartphone with every feature and a big crystal clear resolution but it is a step in the right direction with what hopefully future prepaid smartphones can deliver.and the average user I think will find that this phone is capable of doing more than they require from a smartphone. PS- If shopping for accessories, look at items for the Optimus S as well as it is basically the same phone but has more items available such as screen protectors, car charges, car docks and cases. I hope you found this helpful and if you are signing up for a new account with virgin mobile online and would like 60 extra minutes added to your account (I get 60 as well, so thanks if you use it), just enter kickback/promo code UDwWOwNM. Best of luck with whichever product you decide on.

Using a tracfone for the last 10 years, refusing to be a 100 dollar per month slave to the big carriers, when I saw this VM deal, I jumped the tracfone ship. Had my number ported over by VM customer service who was friendly and helpful. First of all, this is no top of the line smartphone by any stretch, but for the average person like me who doesn't spend hours a day staring at a tiny screen, and annoying others with the thing glued to the side of my head while in the grocery store checkout line, it's absolutely perfect. The screen resolution is not bad and more than adequate for me. The processing speed is quite good, but it's no iPhone, or top of the line HTC either. The battery life is fine if you don't keep wi-fi and gps turned on all the time. Bought a cheap 9 dollar car charger at wally world. Someone else mentioned downloading the app "Quick Settings", which is a good idea if you want to turn your phone into a wi-fi hotspot. The thing I like most about this phone is the text messaging. My Wife is out of town often on business and I can snap a picture of the kids or something and attach it to a text message very easily. Like others, I have big clumsy hands and hate the tiny keyboards all the smartphones have. The swipe feature is worthless to me because my finger covers much of the keyboard so I can't see where to swipe. Android's voice recognition is Very Very good which allows you to speak your message making the keyboard usage minimal anyway. The Google Navigation app is a pleasant surprise also. Very accurate the few times I've tried it. Speak the location like "bicycle shop", it will give you a list of all the bike shops in the area, choose one and it will take you there. The camera is surprisingly good in bright light, but lousy in low light with no flash available. (could care less) The speaker leaves a bit to be desired. It's on the back of the phone and can be hard to hear if not impossible if your in a somewhat noisy environment. A few little quirks with the Android Operating system to figure out I bought a Body Glove rubberized hard shell case with the stand so the phone sits on the table at a 45 degree angle to you, and will also act as a belt clip. I bought this from best buy for 129, but I would still buy it at 199. The 25 per month deal is just too good from Virgin Mobile. Leave a credit card on file with them and don't worry about it. Over all, this a killer little smartphone and I would highly recommend it for anyone with similar usage needs like myself

I just bought this phone a few days ago after my Rumor Touch decided to die on me. I must say, this is an awesome phone! I would have liked a physical keyboard, however, the Swype program makes it so easy to text, write on Facebook, or whatever you need to do with the keyboard. There are tons of free apps on the Android Marketplace for many different purposes, one of those is Angry Birds! You can also link your Facebook account to many different apps, to link stories, places you've visited, ect. You can link your e-mail account to the phone, and it will alert you when you have a new e-mail. It's super easy to check it, too. The camera is really nice-if you have sufficient light. There is no flash. You can upload your pictures with ease to Facebook or Twitter, as well. The wifi on this phone works great, as well. One of my biggest gripes about Virgin Mobile in general is they don't let you have free ringtones from Myxer. I really wish they would allow us to, as it would be great to be able to mix my own ringtones. Instead, you either have to use the pre-loaded ones, or pay for new ones. I know a lot of people probably want to know about Facebook and Youtube. It comes with a Youtube app already pre-installed, you need to go to the Marketplace and download the Facebook app. Both apps run flawlessly. As far as battery life goes, it's good for a smartphone. My Rumor Touch could go days without needing a charge, but it couldn't do half the stuff this phone can do. The more you use the phone, the more battery you drain. I used Facebook, browsed the internet, texted, made a few calls, and played with various apps yesterday, and it still had a half-full battery. I would highly recommend this phone to anyone currently with Virgin Mobile, or anyone thinking about switching to Virgin Mobile. For $150, it is by far the best phone available through VM. Also, I want to comment on VM's service. It runs on the Sprint network, so if Sprint is a good network in your area, this phone will work fine. It also runs on 3G when not on wifi. The call quality is very clear.