Category: Reviews

I recently moved my wife and her mother from T-Mobile cellular plans to Virgin Mobile USA. Everybody’s needs are different, but Virgin Mobile’s plans and phones suited them very well. Nice phones at reasonable prices, no contracts, incredible service rates.

Virgin Mobile is now owned by Sprint and uses the Sprint network. Certainly check coverage maps to be sure the phones will be suitable for you.

The plans for Virgin Mobile’s smartphones are

$25/month: Unlimited texting, unlimited internet, 300 voice minutes
$40/month: Unlimited texting, unlimited internet, 1200 voice minutes
$60/month: Unlimited texting, unlimited internet, unlimited voice minutes

My wife bought a BlackBerry Curve 8530 (after returning the buggy Samsung Intercept smartphone to Best Buy). No touch screen on her BlackBerry. The BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) costs an extra $10/month over the fees above, but it’s still worth it for her. I was told BIS is mandatory on Virgin if I want data on the BlackBerry. My wife is a big BlackBerry fan. My wife’s BlackBerry: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phones/blackberry-curve-8530-phone.jsp

Her mom got the LG Optimus V for $150 from Radio Shack. It’s a small Android phone. I used it for a while, testing it for her. I’m happy with it. Unlike the loser Samsung Intercept my wife had for a few weeks, the LG Optimus is a good little Android phone. No hard keys, just on-screen keyboard. http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phones/lg-optimus-v-phone.jsp

They have other phones at the first link above you might like better, but I like to stick to mainstream operating system phones (Android, BlackBerry, iPhone OS). But your needs may vary.

If you want a non-smartphone, Virgin also has those in spades: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/paylo-plans.jsp

And here are their non-smartphone plans: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/paylo-plans.jsp

I have different cell phone needs from them so I have a T-Mobile prepaid plan. For $30/month, I get a combination of 1500 voice minutes or text messages (any combination) and 30MB of cellular internet. I bought this phone and it was pretty nice, albeit tiny: http://www.amazon.com/T-Mobile-Comet-Prepaid-Android-Phone/dp/B00466HQC4
Don’t buy it from Amazon.com, I got a better deal from T-Mobile, but I didn’t find a direct T-Mobile link. I used it a little bit and found it to be fast and non-buggy. But it’s small. I use my iPhone and keep this phone as a backup or for, say, trips to the beach where I don’t want to damage my iPhone.

I don’t need a lot of internet or minutes, but I wanted to keep my GSM iPhone, so I like the T-Mobile plan. My wife and her mom, however, love their Virgin Mobile phones and service. If the combination of minutes/texting/internet suit you, their prices can’t be beat. You be the judge about whether the cellular coverage is good. For my wife and her mom, it’s been fine.

You can port your phone numbers from Verizon to Virgin Mobile or T-Mobile phones. It’s easy, we all did it. (Well, since I was going from T-Mobile (postpaid, monthly, with contract) to T-Mobile (prepaid, monthly, no contracts) it was a bit of a nightmare until I reached someone who knew how to do this in a way that actually worked.)

You can buy the phones at Best Buy and you have 30 days to return them if you don’t like the phones or the service, no questions asked. If you decide to do this, do check with Verizon to see if they’ll take you back. =)

Oh! Previously, my wife and I had a shared unlimited minutes two-line family plan that cost us $165/month. Now we pay $65/month. Any month she’s going to want more minutes, she just switches online to the $40/mont (+$10 BlackBerry) plan for that month and she gets 1200 minutes for that month. It’s not hard to do.

There are no hidden taxes.

My wife’s Virgin Mobile Samsung Intercept Android phone had one thing she liked: Its physical keypad. It had more things she didn’t like:

Touchscreen (she doesn’t like touchscreens).
Laggy (unresponsive) touchscreen

And it had some bugs:

Internet would drop out for hours multiple times per week, even per day sometimes. Power cycling phone didn’t help.
The Android Notifications bar which you slide down from the top of the launcher screen would frequently just not work. As far as I know, rebooting would handle this. Happened all the time. Drove me batty.

So we returned it to Best Buy within our 30 day return period. That went smoothly. And I got my wife a Virgin Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8530 instead. I’m disappointed to report two things:

1. There’s a $10 BlackBerry internet services (BIS) fee on top of the Virgin Mobile plan rates if I want any internet access on the BlackBerry. WTF?
2. The internet comes and goes throughout the day on the BlackBerry. WTF?!? I don’t get this one and it’s pretty frustrating to me. Does anyone else have unreliable BIS internet access with their Virgin Mobile Blackberry in the Tampa, Clearwater or Dunedin, Florida areas?

P.S. My T-Mobile Comet ran faster and seemed to have a more responsive touchscreen, though I realize that might just be its increased general speed.

12 March 2011 update: It’s been almost two weeks. So far, so good. My wife really relates with her Blackberry and doesn’t miss her Android phone at all, it seems. She’s just not a touchscreen girl. And not a big web browser, either.

29 August 2011 update: As far as I know, internet is now reliable on my wife’s Virgin Mobile-branded BlackBerry. Furthermore, and far more importantly, my wife just doesn’t complain about her BlackBerry. She wishes web browsing wasn’t such an utterly crappy experience, but she’s in love with her phone still. It gives her her constant Google Chat, email and Facebook notifications and that’s pretty much what she wants from a personal access device. She has 300 voice minutes per month and seldom goes over. When she does, Virgin Mobile just charges me $10 for 100 minutes. That’s an okay deal. She thought incoming calls were free until recently, but that misunderstanding didn’t make her want more minutes. Is $35/month worth it? You bet! It’s just right.