I've had the One V for about 3 weeks now. My previous phones in order were the Samsung Intercept, Lg Optimus V, and the Motorola Triumph (All virgin mobile phones).
I bought this phone mostly for the camera and also hoping to finally get a virgin mobile phone with a stock Rom which just works the way its supposed to with out rooting, rom-ing, or waiting for some mythical patch/upgrade which never comes.
Camera: The software is amazing with all its tools and toys for photos. Shutter speeds are very fast, panorama is nice, burst photos is a nice feature as well. Unfortunately the auto-focus lags. This often means rapid succession blurry pictures. Also, in low light subjects are picked up a little better; however, faces turn out over saturated in red, and background noise (compression maybe?) is not good. This "noise" takes away the crispness I was hoping for and adds in fuzzy pixels of graininess. The HDR (high dynamic range) was another feature I was looking forward to. Unfortunately its very finicky. It tries to take three pictures, at three exposures, and stitch them together. Great I suppose for a still object in a lot of glare, but not for taking pictures of my active one year old little boy. Sometimes he ends up with 2 heads and other parts of his body missing (like a scene where things begin to disappear in the original Back to The Future movie).
Video actually is better than I expected. Crisp, clean, with good sound pickup, and the ability to do some minor editing is nice. Love the camera UI disappointed in the over hyped hardware which struggles to keep up.
Phone: Calls are clear, and Volume is Good. There is an issue with the antenna losing signal if you cover it with your hand. This is even mentioned in the phone manual. The antenna is located in the lip. Not too big of an issue, just takes a little mindfulness about how you hold the phone. It also affects your 3g reception, and seems to affect my WI-FI signal strength.
Audio: This is a bright spot. Audio is good both through the speaker and the loud speaker. Beats audio software gets added when you plug anything into the headphone jack. IMO it really does add something to the sound quality even when listening to my favorite pod casts. Voices are less harsh and tones seem rich to my ears.
HTC sense: Not bad at all. I like it. Some nice integrated features like task lists, better control of Facebook options, nice calendar and gmail widgets, and just a lot of nice little things which add to the over all experience.
I think this is the only Ice Cream Sandwich phone Virgin Mobile offers with out their "ID packs". To me this is a plus.
Buttons: The power button is okay. The volume rocker is a little smaller than what I prefer for fingers. Both are not terrible, (not as bad as the buttons on my old triumph) but it would have been nice to have a larger surface area to press. Again better than the Triumph, just not as good as it could have been.
Battery life: Excellent. No problem getting through a whole day of moderate use on one charge. Best battery life I've experienced so far.
Display: Best feature on this phone IMO. Crisp and bright! Tight pixel density, truer blacks, and a very bright display show through. Even when display is at minimum I found it to be not at all fatiguing to my eyes. Awesome display!
Feel in the hand: Okay. The aluminum feels nice, and the phone is very thin. Still that lip is a love/hate thing. Its nice to have something to grab that doesn't have a button to mistakenly push. However, the lip sometimes gets in the way of one handed use (something I like about smaller phones is one handed use). This is a personal preference thing.
Alarm Clock: Fail! Twice in the last 3 weeks its failed to go off. After the time it was supposed to have gone off it still shows as being set to go off. Yes, it was verified to be properly set the night before. Random occurrences of this issue makes this hard to reproduce. This is a basic function that has to work! A phone that randomly doesn't alarm is a phone I can no longer keep. So sad, but a deal breaker for me.
I did not purchase the extra warranty. So tonight I'll go to Radio Shack and see what kind of customer service they have for a phone I've owned only three weeks. I'm thinking I'll try for either the Optimus Elite or the Samsung Galaxy Reverb. I'm probably in the minority of people who find anything over a 4inch display too large. I want my thumb to reach everything on the screen when using the device with one hand.
I bought this phone mostly for the camera and also hoping to finally get a virgin mobile phone with a stock Rom which just works the way its supposed to with out rooting, rom-ing, or waiting for some mythical patch/upgrade which never comes.
Camera: The software is amazing with all its tools and toys for photos. Shutter speeds are very fast, panorama is nice, burst photos is a nice feature as well. Unfortunately the auto-focus lags. This often means rapid succession blurry pictures. Also, in low light subjects are picked up a little better; however, faces turn out over saturated in red, and background noise (compression maybe?) is not good. This "noise" takes away the crispness I was hoping for and adds in fuzzy pixels of graininess. The HDR (high dynamic range) was another feature I was looking forward to. Unfortunately its very finicky. It tries to take three pictures, at three exposures, and stitch them together. Great I suppose for a still object in a lot of glare, but not for taking pictures of my active one year old little boy. Sometimes he ends up with 2 heads and other parts of his body missing (like a scene where things begin to disappear in the original Back to The Future movie).
Video actually is better than I expected. Crisp, clean, with good sound pickup, and the ability to do some minor editing is nice. Love the camera UI disappointed in the over hyped hardware which struggles to keep up.
Phone: Calls are clear, and Volume is Good. There is an issue with the antenna losing signal if you cover it with your hand. This is even mentioned in the phone manual. The antenna is located in the lip. Not too big of an issue, just takes a little mindfulness about how you hold the phone. It also affects your 3g reception, and seems to affect my WI-FI signal strength.
Audio: This is a bright spot. Audio is good both through the speaker and the loud speaker. Beats audio software gets added when you plug anything into the headphone jack. IMO it really does add something to the sound quality even when listening to my favorite pod casts. Voices are less harsh and tones seem rich to my ears.
HTC sense: Not bad at all. I like it. Some nice integrated features like task lists, better control of Facebook options, nice calendar and gmail widgets, and just a lot of nice little things which add to the over all experience.
I think this is the only Ice Cream Sandwich phone Virgin Mobile offers with out their "ID packs". To me this is a plus.
Buttons: The power button is okay. The volume rocker is a little smaller than what I prefer for fingers. Both are not terrible, (not as bad as the buttons on my old triumph) but it would have been nice to have a larger surface area to press. Again better than the Triumph, just not as good as it could have been.
Battery life: Excellent. No problem getting through a whole day of moderate use on one charge. Best battery life I've experienced so far.
Display: Best feature on this phone IMO. Crisp and bright! Tight pixel density, truer blacks, and a very bright display show through. Even when display is at minimum I found it to be not at all fatiguing to my eyes. Awesome display!
Feel in the hand: Okay. The aluminum feels nice, and the phone is very thin. Still that lip is a love/hate thing. Its nice to have something to grab that doesn't have a button to mistakenly push. However, the lip sometimes gets in the way of one handed use (something I like about smaller phones is one handed use). This is a personal preference thing.
Alarm Clock: Fail! Twice in the last 3 weeks its failed to go off. After the time it was supposed to have gone off it still shows as being set to go off. Yes, it was verified to be properly set the night before. Random occurrences of this issue makes this hard to reproduce. This is a basic function that has to work! A phone that randomly doesn't alarm is a phone I can no longer keep. So sad, but a deal breaker for me.
I did not purchase the extra warranty. So tonight I'll go to Radio Shack and see what kind of customer service they have for a phone I've owned only three weeks. I'm thinking I'll try for either the Optimus Elite or the Samsung Galaxy Reverb. I'm probably in the minority of people who find anything over a 4inch display too large. I want my thumb to reach everything on the screen when using the device with one hand.