Don't Buy The Optimus V (yet at least)

[turkletont]

My 3g drops CONSTANTLY here in Colorado. I will be browsing the internet fine then it will just randomly stop working, I gotta reboot to fix it. It probably drops every 5-10 minutes. The 3g is completely unusable.

 

[Timm129]

I just got off the phone again with Virgin and they admitted the "network problems" may not be fixed "until May". They also admitted they've been getting LOTS of calls (it was 20 minutes of hold time).

Others have posted Virgin essentially gets "leftover 3G" bandwidth from Sprint. And, at times in some areas, there might not be any leftovers to get--the plate is empty. It seems likely what Virgin is calling "network outages" is really excessive "network congestion" and that's why it's something they can't fix anytime soon and are being so vague about it.

The networks already have the means to prioritize traffic, and it's trivial to make Virgin data traffic a lower priority than Sprint data traffic. So it's very easy to see how this might be the main source of the problems. Virgin has never had a really popular smartphone until now and the $25/month unlimited data plan is relatively new as well. So this could be a bad sign.

I was given the end of May date also. I was told that Sprint is trying to get 4G towers up and going therefore it is creating problems during the updating. I see this as being good for us VM users in the long run as hopefully more people will switch to 4G leaving some "leftovers" for us VM users. The end of May is a long time away but $25 for 100% reliable text and voice is still pretty good. Data here seems to be about 40-50% reliable.

 

[musick]

I've had mine for 1.5 months and I love it. Works great here in San Diego (N County). I would recommend it to anyone.

Another S.D. resident checking in.

Had my V for almost 3 weeks and 3G works all the time except that recent nationwide outage and from 5-6pm, it works 60% of the time.

For the price, I can put up with a 1 hr window of now 3G.

OP should not paint with such a wide brush.

As said, a lot of the problems are region specific.

 

[VeloMichael]

Another S.D. resident checking in.

Had my V for almost 3 weeks and 3G works all the time except that recent nationwide outage and from 5-6pm, it works 60% of the time.

For the price, I can put up with a 1 hr window of now 3G.

OP should not paint with such a wide brush.

As said, a lot of the problems are region specific.

Well, I hope you don't have to travel with yours and hardly anyone else in San Diego buys a Virgin Android phone.

I'd say posts are about 50/50 in this thread with half reporting problems--some severe. So is painting this with a "half broad" brush OK?

And mine worked fine, with hardly a glitch, for the first 2 weeks. But as they sold more phones in this area, it's gotten steadily worse. Today the 3G has essentially been unusable. Of course how much of this is related to "work" being done on the network I can't say. But check the other threads here and elsewhere. This is a huge problem.

For those of you who are lucky enough to live somewhere without many problems, I hope that remains true. But don't count on it.

 

[Investor22]

When I see posts like these it tells me it is a phone issue. (Howard forums)

I believe that it's phone related too..I'm toggling and doing battery pulls on my optimus v while my son sits next to me on the couch checking his facebook status on his intercept. His phone rarely had data issues. We have four virgin mobile phones in the house......only one has data issues....you guessed it...my optimus v. -Mobile Roman

I have read (and verified on my phone after inputting some characters into the dialer) that it is due to a conflict of the Optimus on CDMA but searching for a different kind of signal. I read about it via a link from here relating to the 50% idle problem. I installed AddinTimer and haven't had much of a problem since. IF this is the cause of the problems with data, it would make it phone related instead of network, as we have 3 different VM phones here (Optimus, BB, and Intercept) and only the Optimus has problems with data, and theoretically a software update can fix the problem. Until then, hopefully the workarounds keep working around the problem. -Tari

Howard Forums

There is also another Optimus V forum over on Android Central

Android Central

 

[DBNissan]

Well, if you really want good data coverage, you can always go pay over $100/mo with one of the main providers. My life does not rely on data coverage so the $25/mo plan is the best deal I've come across.

 

[dsohn1015]

Working fine in Chicago

 

[KentInPhilly]

This thread jinxed me.... I did not have 3G service most of the day yesterday... but it was back this morning

 

[greg4android]

that's my thinking.....the phone works great for phone calls. and 300 minutes is more than enough for me $25.

The data issue, while irritating, is just the strained network due to the overwhelming rollout of this device (as well as the MC760 USB device...see my other comment on that)...

I dont have to be connected to the internet all the time on this phone.

But it is a problem VM/Sprint needs to address and fix, though.

Well, if you really want good data coverage, you can always go pay over $100/mo with one of the main providers. My life does not rely on data coverage so the $25/mo plan is the best deal I've come across.

 

[VeloMichael]

If people mainly want just voice and texts, then sure, they can turn off all the sync stuff and just use the Optimus V as a cheapo voice phone instead of a smartphone. If they leave the data turned on, however, they'll likely have greatly reduced battery life even if they don't use the web directly. And they're missing out on all sorts of other cool stuff that you only get with a working data connection. Obviously this only applies to the roughly half the country that seems to be having significant 3G problems.

Things like voice search, maps, etc. are all great but they're useless without a reliable data connection. There's all kinds of other stuff on any Android phone that's the same way. If you really don't want any of that, don't get an Android phone. Get something with a smaller screen and longer battery life.

Don't forget the Optimus V frequently gets "stuck" retrying a broken 3G connection and kills the battery in a matter of hours if you don't know it's stuck. So even if you just want to make a voice call, you pull your phone out and it's DEAD.