• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Root LG Optimus F3 Or Just A Repackaged Elite??

I upgraded my kid to the Reverb recently. Its a snappy phone, decent specs. I'm not sure what the development community for it is like but its solidly built and he's having no data issues or any of the other issues the elite had.
 
Just got a F3. No issues, looks great and is very smooth and fast. No comparison to the Elite (besides the shape), this phone would consider that a big insult. :)

A couple of notes:

It has a Sim card, and seems to be unlocked and then provisioned for virgin mobile when activated. Similar to the ip4s.

It has no light sensor.

The reviews (for the sprint version) that showed the quadrant score of 3300 is BS, just rannit and got just over 5000, and saw another VM version get even higher. So those into those benchmarks be relieved. Lol.

That's about it, the optimus skin is pretty nice and really can complain, the wife likes it. Hopefully it I'll remain smooth, its a huge upgrade from the Rise she had. Its a great bang for the buck, especially if it goes on sale for below 150.
 
Great news to hear.
I keep threatening to dump the Elite... Grandfather plan keeps me holding on... It ran the best with CM9 on it, but still has network issues.. I want a camera which keeps me away from CM9 for now... :(

Keep us informed on the battery and network surfing...
 
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't virgin mobile take 5 dollars off your bill if you have it auto with a debit or credit card? That'd make it less of a stretch instead of paying $10 more a month
 
elgecko said:
Great news to hear.
I keep threatening to dump the Elite... Grandfather plan keeps me holding on... It ran the best with CM9 on it, but still has network issues.. I want a camera which keeps me away from CM9 for now... :(

Keep us informed on the battery and network surfing...
Click to expand...

Grandfather plan will keep me on the Elite. I'm holding off on cm9 too until the camera works. Gingerbread is fine for now. Only thing is a couple apps I wanted recently require 4.0 or higher like Vine and Rockpocolpse! Lol. Not worth giving up my $25 plan or camera for.
 
My terrible Elite completely soured me on LG devices after a good experience with the Optimus V. However the F3 appears to be a good phone from the early reviews.

The Victory is indeed a bulky phone, but it does have LTE and runs well on stock. You can root it, use Link2SD for more space, and even utilize it as a hotspot with some tweaks. I'm happy with it, but the F3 looks like a better value at the price. The downside is the dev community around the VM F3 is still very small to non-existent.
 
im looking at the victory of galaxy sII at the moment. may even leave pre behind for some serious verizon goodness. im a little sick of sh*t customer support. a top of the line device with great customer support and no outages when i drive 15-20 miles from my covered area are worth the $79 a month. and as of now..service is terrible in my supposed fully covered and upgraded area. getting the usual vm run around. turns out the below dialup speeds 1kb/s to 2kn/s speeds are due to congestion in my area with NO time frame on when it will be resolved. i cant see continuing to pay for the service with terrible support like that. when richard branson ran vm..there never were issues like this..now that sprint owns it..its went down hill. i am going to help some u.s. cellular one v owners get three roms up and running for them and then im leaving the one v and most likely vm behind.
 
elgecko said:
Great news to hear.
I keep threatening to dump the Elite... Grandfather plan keeps me holding on... It ran the best with CM9 on it, but still has network issues.. I want a camera which keeps me away from CM9 for now... :(

Keep us informed on the battery and network surfing...
Click to expand...

After a day there are no issues with signal, no overheating, its all good. Been using the preloaded chrome browser, I disabled the stock browser.

Pulled off the charger at noon, 12 later of average use (fb, an hour or more of calls, and web browsing on WiFi) its still at 70%. If it makes it through tomorrow (mostly likely) it will be a day and a half on a charge. The only battery saving item is juice defender on balanced. And that's only the first full charge, so it should only get better.


****Battery update, wife charged it at noon, so 2 days on a charge with average usage with juice defender, and non used apps disabled.
 
I think that I may drop the OE for the F3. The constant data connection drop issue that plagues many of us is just too much frustration, and it doesn't look like we have any radio firmware guys working on the OE. It is a shame because the OE is almost perfect, except for the whole "oh hi, were you wanting to use my data connection? I dropped it give me a minute to find it...jk pls reboot lulz!" thing.
 
I've compared and compared and compared...and compared VM's current offerings. What I actually WANT is the Galaxy SIII, but I don't want to spend $400 on a phone. In the end, the F3 seems to be the best balance of power, size and price at the moment. The EVO V is also good, but no longer available and it had its quirks (lousy battery life, imperceptibly low call volume). Since LTE service is rolling out in my area, there are only a few options that make sense going forward with VM right now. My cheap instincts will likely keep me with VM as I already pay enough for Comcast high speed intertubes at home and I don't feel like paying 2x (or more) than I am paying now for phone service with a better carrier.

I'd try to hold out for Black Friday to see what sort of deal VM does on the SIII, but I don't think that I can stand the OE's flaky performance that long. Having to reboot to make a voice call or get data service is not acceptable, and I have to do that a few times a week. So I may pick up the F3 instead. It's gotta be worlds better than the OE, and have better battery life, and the screen should be a big improvement too. Now, hopefully it will actually maintain a data connection!
 
Well I hope I did a good thing.
As some of you know I've voiced my displeasure about the OE many months back. I broke down this evening and ordered the F3.....
 
For those of you thinking about ditching Virgin Mobile altogether ATT has just added some new prepaid plans.

Prepaid Cell Phone Plans, GoPhone Plans, & Prepaid Smartphone plans from AT&T

If you are on the $35 a month vm plan but don't use much data the new ATT $40 a month plan may be a good option. It only comes with 200 MB but you can add 100 more for $5. An extra 5 or 10 dollars a month isn't bad for much better service.

They also just added the Samsung Galaxy Express for $250 which spec wise is much better than anything we have been discussing on VM besides the S3. I am guessing it will go on sale from time to time putting it in the same price range as the Victory.

Samsung Galaxy Express GoPhone - Prepaid cell phone from AT&T

I will probably go this route within the next couple months just because of the much better coverage ATT has in my area.
 
I'm still pretty happy with my Elite. The data issues are annoying but I'm usually on Wi-Fi, and I don't want to give up my $25 plan. I'll see what black Friday brings. If they offer some killer deal on one of their 4g phones then I just might have to switch.
 
Dark One said:
I'm still pretty happy with my Elite. The data issues are annoying but I'm usually on Wi-Fi, and I don't want to give up my $25 plan. I'll see what black Friday brings. If they offer some killer deal on one of their 4g phones then I just might have to switch.
Click to expand...

trouble with the black friday deals is you have to be lucky to get in on them before they run out of stock.
 
Well, I am a liar. I got Best Buy to match the price VM is selling the S3 for, and since I have to pay sales tax either way, I figured I would skip the wait and get it locally. The Optimus F3 was very tempting, but I figured it would end up being a waste since I'd likely buy the S3 sometime in the next 12 months anyway.

Why did I decide to dump the OE today? I was trying to call back my wife this evening and it dropped all bars every time I tried to make a call. Even a reboot wasn't fixing it. Honestly, after the OE let-down, I think I am done with LG. It's a shame that the OE had such major issues with basic functionality, because I'd be happy to continue rocking it otherwise. Dev support and the ROMs for it are really great! Not being able to make a simple voice call is an unforgivable fault in a PHONE, in my opinion.

The OE will still serve well as a nice light WiFi and GPS toy, though. Well, sort of. The GPS sometimes takes 15 minutes to get a lock lol. That was an old nail in the coffin though. Maybe a total wipe and re-flash of the OS will cure that. With mobile data disabled, it should really see an improvement in battery life!
 
bmwman91 said:
Well, I am a liar. I got Best Buy to match the price VM is selling the S3 for, and since I have to pay sales tax either way, I figured I would skip the wait and get it locally.
Click to expand...

Nice I'm surprised they would match an online retailer like vm. Let us know how the service on it compares.
 
Here's my story:
Started on Virgin with the Optimus V. Great phone.
Then Virgin said about raising the plan from $25 to $35 after a specific date. The Optimus elite had just come out. I decided to jump on that phone so I could keep my $25.00 plan. Unfortunately the phone had not been out long enough to show its ugly side, which I found very quickly after getting the phone.
The OE could have been a great phone but LG messed it up bad. I was very tempted to move to another manufacturer and never look at another LG phone again.... but I would reminisce of the little OV. In fact my wife is still using her OV that we got around 2 years ago. So I decided I would give LG one more chance to redeem themselves....boy did they with the F3.
After a few days with the F3, I can say I'm extremely happy having a phone that is supposed to work the way it is supposed to.
When you get the correct drives :o, it's very easy to root.
I'm so happy with the way the phone works, I don't think I would care if no developers made any ROMs for it.... It just works that good.

So to answer your question Curtis1973, the F3 is no where close to a repackaged Elite.

This happened when I had my OE; My wife is so glad to not have to hear me say how much I hate the OE anymore. She probably heard it at least 3 times a week.....

I will be getting my wife a F3 shortly.....
 
I own an F3 now. Definitely NOT a repackaged Elite. The buttons are the same as the S3 but the 2 soft buttons are switched. (Menu and Back) Quick memo works even better. Barely any bloat. You can root it with the F7 root Moto chopper. They have a 2nd init recovery but that's the best were gonna get for this phone sadly. It works perfect on stock anyways tho, 4.1.2 is nice. I always have trouble with battery and OHMYGOODNESS the battery lasted 17 hours of heavy usage and still had 37% battery left tonight before plugging it in. I love the phone and recommend it more then any other virgin mobile phone I promise you wont be disappointed.

But buy a case for it. Its light and can tend to slip out of your hands lol
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom