Rating: 
Summary: many features
Review: This little phone packs quite a lot of features. It is great for someone who will not make a large amount of calls. Good reception and very small phone.
Rating: 
Summary: Not good so far...
Review: My parents bought this phone for me for Christmas. The phone itself is extremely nice, an upgrade from my prior Nokia 5150 old-school phone. No complaints about the actual phone itself. As far as Virgin's service & coverage is concerned, it's been nothing but a hassle so far. It took me 16+ hours one day of trying to call the phone number and logging onto the website to activate my phone. Once I activated and programmed my phone, and I tested it when there was service (half-hour from my house) it didn't work. I couldn't place calls or receive calls to my phone (it went straight to voicemail). I tried sending them e-mails to get the situation rectified which were not replied to. I also tried calling for the past few days, even staying up til 2 or 3am to try to get through with no dice. I finally got through tonight and the person I talked to after being put on hold for 45 minutes was very helpful, and said that the directions on the website and ones given over the phone to program my new phone were incorrect. He led me step-by-step to program my phone. I just got off the phone with them, unable to test it (due to lack of service in my area as described), decided to dial my Virgin number from my home phone, and it went directly to voice mail like it did beforehand. Not sure if that is what it does by default when it is out of service or not. So this VirginMobile saga continues, I almost feel like returning it to BestBuy and signing a contract with Verizon if I have to put up with much more of this. Overall, I'd say this phone would be ideal to purchase with a different wireless provider. The only reason I am giving it 3 stars is because the Audiovox phone is very nice.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty darn cool and practical.
Review: After watching my 19-year old son use his phone smartly and not call everybody all the time...I noticed he was averaging only about $20 a month in usage- I thought to myself that's pretty good-and I could use a phone like that myself, for emergencies or if I'm going to be late. I can call my husband or my family from the car, from the gas station, or whatever. Now that I have the phone--I'm freaked out by all the features like voice recognition, a 300 person contact list to fill up with folks I know, schedule, alarms, even voice memo to self! My son is amazed that I'm really programming the phone...he didn't bother with that. I don't need all that stupid stuff like a colored phone or a camera in the phone...but I really like the current tunes you can download as ring tones for a small fee and really personalize it (and I'm talkin' real beats like 'in da club'), ability to lock it, view your incoming call log, outgoing call log, create and send text messages. Yeah, the animation might be girlie - but my son just skipped that part. I think this 'pay as you go' thing is the way to do it, particularly if you're not made of money, and would like to have a phone 'just in case'. The best thing is the bare minimum to keep the service going and the phone active is $20 every 90 days. I say "two thumbs up". Oh and I could go on and on about very good customer service - they seriously jam. Oh, you want to spend your entire life on your cellphone? This is not for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice try, but no cigar...
Review: I have now owned TWO of these phones over the past six months. Why two? Because I was told that the first was faulty due to its inability to receive a strong, consistent signal. However, my second phone was just as bad. This was surprising because my wife (who has the cheaper Kyocera virgin phone) has NEVER had a problem receiving a signal. Virgin have told me several times (since my purchase) that THIS phone in particular is not worth anything because of the problems with receiving a signal - yet you cannot send it back for a different phone! The worst aspect of this particular problem is that the phone constantly loses service (for no reason) and then quickly re-gains it - beeping at finding it again. This constant beeping not only is annoying (and cannot be turned off), but also kills the battery in about 1 day (on standby). Don't get me wrong - it's a nicely-featured phone. I love owning it, and the polyphonic ringtones are very nice when you download one that you like (for $2). It's the smallest phone I have ever seen, and really light. Of course, all this is irrelevant if you cannot use it properly... which, sadly, is the case. You will love the actual phone, but hate the service (which is not quite fair because Virgin are a good company). Just be very careful when buying this phone. The new Slider V5 is supposedly MUCH better (and due to my wife's Kyocera I would be inclined to believe that).
Rating:
Summary: Nice phone for girls - and Virgin takes $$$ for everything
Review: this is indeed a nice phone, virgin mobile(which uses the all digital sprint network) voice quality is superb, no drop-outs experienced whatsoever. Phone has almost every feature you can imagine except color displays and a camera. But if it comes to configuring your phone, eg. if you want new screensavers etc. you will be disappointed. There are only three 'girlish' screen savers/logos and only ONE reasonable ring-tone built in. For every ringtone to d/l from the web you need to pay $2.
Same for the absolute useless virgin/mtv browser which is built into the phone. They want money for almost everything there. I would much rather have a phone with an offered *real* WAP (wireless internet) service (ie.for some $$/month for my favorite web sites, news, sending messages etc.)...but Virgin Mobile limited the (existing !) WAP capability of this phone so you can only connect to the virgin/mtv website and then you have to pay for everything. Plus: Nice phone
Cons: Limited ways to configure/personalize
No WAP/Internet, Ringtones expensive etc.
Bottomline: Ok
Rating:
Summary: So Far, So Good
Review: I purchased my phone today and got $10 as a starter. So far, so good. I love the phone. I've been waiting to get it for the past couple of weeks and I'm havent been let down by it's performance.
It is really small, it's cute, and is pretty sturdy if you dont misuse it. I live in the NY (Queens) area and I havent had any trouble with service.
Rating:
Summary: Just A Fabulous Phone
Review: I bought this phone for myself for my birthday and I love it!!!!!!!! Setting it up couldn't have been easier and it gives me all the features i want/need like text messaging, ringtones, caller id,and all of the exclusive content from MTV and VH1. The phone is really small and great to fit in my purse. I can't wait to show this phone off to my friends. I reccomend stocking up on Top Up Cards while there on sale. I hope this review helped u.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Pre Paid Phone
Review: I'd like to start off writing that this is a great phone.I didn't really like pre paid until this phone came out. I had one problem in the beginning where i had charged the phone for a short while till the charger went from red to green. So i had decided to check out my new phone, and i went into the Xtras when i was supposed to let it charge for 24 hours. This led my Xtras not to work. I should have waited. So i called Virgin Mobile's Central Intellegence for assistance. It turned out that i screwed up and had to get a new phone number. But now the Xtras work with the new number.SO REMEMBER DO EXACTLY WHAT THE DIRECTIONS TELL YOU TO DO. Learn from my mistake. Now to the phone, i don't care what anyone with a negative comment about the phone has to say. This is a great phone. Maybe the phone may not work well in their area. I live in the Washington D.C. area but i bought this phone in Maryland and it works great with me.Great Features.It has speaker phone, caller ID, VirginXtras,voice mail, and text messaging. The only thing is that there aren't any games. But on the Xtras, there are some MTV games.Per call 25 cents until after 6 min or 10 min becomes 10 cents. VirginXtras let you go on explore MTV and MTV News,VH1 and VH1 news, ringtones and more.It cost 10 cents per day to use everything on the Xtras. You get to download 20 ringtones.I recommend that you go to www.virginmobileusa.com and listen to the ringtones before you buy them. It cost$2.00 to buy 1 ringtone. But that's good because the ringtones are good. Also make sure your phone is with you at all times, and if you get a clip to hold it, don't hang it on your pocket because since this phone is so light, someone could steal it in a heartbeat. So I hope that this review has been helpful to you. By the way i am 15 years old.
Rating:
Summary: This Fone Is Fun!
Review: OK! Now when i got this phone, it was the CUTEST thing ive ever seen! Its soo small! There are 7 LCD colors!..They are ALL bright! Its a really cool "show off" phone..but..sometimes..its frustrating. Sometimes i cant get on to the Virgin Extras...which suck! So.. idont know why i care.. but i do! Virgin Mobile is GREAT for kids though. Its soo simple! Talk for ten minutes a day at ) $.25 a minute..and then after that all minutes are 10 cents..simple! I really enjoy this phone...and i think you will too! ;)!
Rating:
Summary: Separate the phone from the service
Review: It seems to me too many people are confusing the phone with the local service. I have only had my 8500 a few days, but this is what I have learned so far. -In the Salt Lake City metro area, signal strength is not a problem. Signal strengh is as good or better than my previous service provider: AT&T. -The phone itself is very impressive for the price, assuming you don't need color, bells and whistles. -The little rubber cover that protects the connector at the bottom of the phone, as nearly as I can tell, was not designed to remain with the phone. I suspect it was only meant for shipping purposes. None of my other cell phones have had such covers, so I cannot consider this a problem. -The little speaker is weak. Anything over volume level 2 begins to overdrive the little speaker and distorts the audio signal, but I can hear just fine at level 2, so it is not a significant problem for me. -The phone is not friendly to hands-free earphones, although there is a jack on the phone for that purpose. When an earpiece is connected, incoming calls continue to ring on the phone and not in the earpiece, pretty much rendering the hands-free concept useless. -Downloadable ringtones from Virgin are not impressive--unless you're big into MTV or VH1. Other than that, I am impressed with the overall quality of the Virgin Mobile service, and they are less expensive than the other pre-paid services. -The menus on the phone are not as user friendly as they might be, but I would consider this to be only a minor design flaw. I cannot speak to the reliability of the phone yet, but overall, I would have to say it is an impressive little phone--and I do mean "little."
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