Monday, March 31, 2008

Virgin Mobile Switches Its Audience With Tracfone

In an unprecedented step of policy, to combat falling stock prices, Virgin Mobile will be focusing heavily on the core market of any sane cellular company: talkers. Tracfone seems to be doing just the opposite.

Effective today, Virgin Mobile will be discontinuing all phones higher in feature set than the Super Slice, with the Super Slice's existence still in question. Text messaging bundles will stay around, but a new website theme suggests that the main arm from now on will be voice calling, in this recession economy of ours.

Virgin Mobile's minute plans are being emphasized more and more, and rumor has it tat an unlimited option will be available in a few short days, though pricing remains a mystery. Rumor also has it that Virgin Mobile will be re-introducing its Shorty phone, though this time it'll be with a color screen. Sounds like something I've seen before...you know, the Nikia 2126i from Tracfone?

Which reminds me: Tracfone is doing something even weirder. They're now tailoring their phones and services to the teeny bopper audience, with cheap phones and data-heavy services. In an unprecedented collusion with Virgin Mobile, Tracfone will be exchanging all its stock of Nokia and Motorola phones for Virgin Mobile's Kyocra...Kyocera and UTStarCom models. That means that the K126c on Tracfone will be here to stay. It looks like Tracfone has also secured a deal with Alcatel for cheap yet seemingly full-featured GSM phones, since Virgin Mobile is CDMA-only and Tracfone seems to still want to keep up their GSM service.

Effective immediately, all Tracfone promotional codes are void, the airtime cards now carrying a dollar denomination rather than a minute one, except for special "minute plans" where airtime, when purchased in bulk, is still less expensive. The Net10 brand seems to have survived intact, though it will be exclusively LG phone-wise for the forseeable future, to avoid tarnishing all of Tracfone's reputation with subpar phones. After all, Carlos Slim wants to get even richer off of the service, which is larger than the third and fourth largest cellular carriers in Mexico, combined. Then again, Slim (who owns the company that owns Tracfone) owns the company that owns the largest cell provider in Mexico anyway.

Look for garish-colored packaging on Tracfones near you, as well as more sensible-looking, ower-end but higher-quality Virgin Mobile phones. It's odd that Virgin Mobile would discad the main benefit of the Sprint network, data, in favor of a voice-centric model, but then again rumor has it that roaming agreements Tracfone has worked out over the years of its existence are being transferred over to Virgin Mobile in exchange for help on setting up data services and data roaming agreements to make Tracfone's CDMA arm experience a rich one.

Weird, but who am I to say what's riht and wrong in the cell industry? And who am I to write an article about the two big prepaid companies like there's actually something going on with them today?

Yes, folks, it's April 1st. Happy April Fools' Day!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

More Phone Reviews - Coming Soon!

It sure looks as though I'll soon have reviews of all the shiny new Virgin Mobile phones under my belt. Or most of them at least. Between paying for the Flare out of the ad money gathered for this site from Google and the great folks over at BabbleBug, getting the Aloha on loan from MyMinutes.com, and now (again from ad money) getting the Super Slice from the Cell Guru, he reviews are pouring in. Add to that the review of the Net10 Nokia 1600 and you've got a lot of phone reviewing from right here. Maybe even beating out PhoneScoop on review density, and I'm a one-man band ;). Then again, they also have a lot of stuff that I don't...

So anyway, reviews for the Super Slice and the Aloha will be coming up in the next week or two, and another phone or two will follow. I may be able to get a review unit for another sweet phone from BabbleBug, but it hasn't been confirmed yet (supporting them always helps with such matters) and, once the ad money permits, I'll be laying out the cash for the Virgin Mobile Wild Card, though reviews of the Motorola w175g and the LG 400g may come between now and then.

Thanks to everyone for their support, and please keep on with it; I'm putting 100% of the money earned this month on ads back into the site for phone reviews and the new domain name, www.go4prepaid.net, so please keep the support of this site going, both for BabbleBug and whatever Google might be serving up above this post. If your friends might have need of this site, tell 'em. If you have any questions about stuff, check out the forum and you'll probably get an answer there. Or drop me a line.

In closing, remember that there's a giveaway going on right now! Head over to the forum and post something useful, whether it's a question or a tip, and you're entered into the giveaway. The prize is the LG Flare that I just reviewed, brand new and with about $9 worth of credit (more than you'd get with it at a store), so it's worth shooting or, especially with the great odds :). Good luck in advance!

Friday, March 28, 2008

And we have a domain name again!

This time, the domain, which is go4prepaid.net this time (and should be live shortly, and point to this site) will be in my name, so what happened to go4prepaid.info (non-renewal by a friend leading to it vanishing and being taken up by some link farm-ish thing) won't happen here. I'll hopefully get www.go4prepaid.com eventually as well, but at least there is now an easier way to get here than the usual g4pp.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

LG Flare Giveaway

Yes folks, it's here. I'm giving away the LG Flare I just reviewed (a fine phone for voice, I must say), for free, and the contest to get it starts now and ends 11:59:59 PM Mountain Time, Saturday night, April 5th, 2008.

Okay, so it isn't as much of a contest as a plain old giveaway with an entrance requirement. The requirement: post during the giveaway period to the Go4Prepaid Forum with something of value (I determine this subjectively but it's easy to do...anything from a spotted Tracfone deal to a promo code to a tip on some new carrier or phone available). Also, if you don't mind checking out this blog's sponsors (don't realy care about the ads on the forum just yet...they aren't mine...) that'd be great. Do this and you're entered into the giveaway. At midnight, Sunday morning, I'll figure out who won and private message them via the forum so they can claim their prize.

That's about it. Again, the prize is a shiny new LG Flare flip phone, which I reviewed last night, loaded with about $9 in airtime (I had to top up $10 on it so it has more on the phone than when I got it out of the box). Total value, including tax: $40-ish. Post on the forum to enter and best of luck to you!

P.S. MyMinutes (thanks guys!) said they're sending the LG Aloha to me today for review. Look for something here soon about it! Also, look for a review on the UTStarCom Super Slice from Virgin Mobile in relatively short order as well.

Virgin Mobile $60 1-year Promo

Looks like right now if you add $60 to your account within three days and are within 30 days of getting the phone activated, you get a year of service time extended to you. Normally the amount is $80. Neat little bonus, though I would check your My Account page for an obnoxious little popup saying so before you go out and do it.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

LG Aloha Review Soon!

This isn't 110% sure, but looks like MyMinutes.com (thanks guys!) is going to send me an LG Aloha for review here. No, I'm not forgetting about reviewing the LG Flare that is sitting to the right of me on my desk, that'll come later this evening, promise. Just saying that you're in for a review-filled treat this month (and a little of next month). :)

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

LG LX165 Flare (Virgin Mobile)

EDIT: Battery life looks to be a little over a week, maybe eight days, in mostly-standby usage. Very good by me.

So here's the review of the LG Flare, finally out, a few days after I got the phone (Monday early afternoon, paid for by your visiting my sponsors: BabbleBug and the Google-syndicated stuff).

The battery bars are still max'd out at the moment so I'll have to return back to this review for battery life stats, but for everything else on this Bluetooth-toting basic flip phone, the jury is no longer out, and this is evinced by the following review...

First, the build quality is nice. I would shy away from calling it "perfect", as there's a tiny amount of wobble in the hinge when the phone is closed (which I've seen in most LG phones I've had) but it's darned close. One thing about the buttons though: they're a bit more firm than usual to my touch, as in extra pressure is needed to get them to register. The feedback when they're pressed is great, however I wouldn't do a ton of texting on this unit.

But as I was saying, the fit and finish of this phone is great, superb if you compare it to the rest of Virgin Mobile's lineup, especially to the Kyoceras. Admittedly, this phone is basic, with no camera and...no camera (aside from the Wild Card's keyboard this phone looks to support everything Virgin Mobile has to offer shy of a camera) so there isn't a lot of stuff to do wrong, but for $30 I'm impressed. The phone is also quite small, nice and thin, and rather light, though not too light (there is such a thing). Styling, breaking away from the teeny-bopper designs characteristic of typical Virgin Mobile phones (though this seems to be fading a bit), is black with silver accents (aside from the red Virgin Mobile logo that lights up the external screen...which is color...when the phone is open) and looks very professional, posh, etc. It's still plastic, and yes that black front will attract fingerprints (thus requiring an OCD amount of wiping to keep it looking good) but when I first saw the price sheet on this phone *somehow* and it said $50...well...this, I would say, is a $50 phone. Especially considering that its precursor, the LX150, is being sold on other prepaid services for the same, or higher, prices, than the $30 at least.

If you're wanting photos, they'll be at the end of this review, by the way.

Anyhow, reception on this phone is pretty good. Then again, I'm happy to say that Sprint has excellent coverage around these parts, but at least the Flare doesn't show signs of weakness. I'm pretty sure it would hold up in less phone-friendly areas, too; its internal antenna is fine for receiving the PCS-band signals Sprint gives off. Voice quality, distinct from reception, is merely okay; the fourteen-minute call (during which I topped up $10 on top of the $2.50 starter airtime) I made with it sounded on the harsh side, but then again I'm used to the iPhone and my Sprint HTC Mogul, which I told to use a better voice encoder awhile back. Still...

The phone also has Bluetooth, though the only thing you can do with it is hook up to a headset or handsfree device of some sort. I'd say Bluetooth reception is merely average, maybe a little low, but then again I'm using cheap Insignia headphones as a headset. Maybe I should get a real headset sometime and see how that fares with my various Bluetooth-enabled phones :)

In terms of user interface, cross Virgin Mobile's red (or black or speckly blue), pop-style themes with the UI that dates back to the LG 225 cameraphone and possibly beyond and you get the picture. Then again, even i the status icons that show up at the top of both internal and external screens start to look dated, why mess with something that works, and has worked for nearly three and a half years. Though again there has been a facelift at least on the Flare, adopting a more flat, modern, motif to fit the audience. Cool by my book.

Feature-wise, you get nothing out of the ordinary on a basic flip phone aside from Bluetooth and the color external display, which pretty much fades into the surrounding blackness when it is off. The web browser is fine for something running on the 1xRTT system, but then again 1xRTT is slow compared with EvDO (yes,, I know, "well duh", but this was made in 2008 yaknow). Probably to keep people from sucking down 5MB of data in one sitting, or even one month, something I also found impossible with other Virgin Mobile phones (like the Kyocera Cyclops and the original UTStarCom Slice). Text messaging is fine, though, on further looking seems like you'll need another phone to do IM or download applications. Ah, the life of a basic phone.

In case you're wondering, however, this phone isn't cursed with the lack of ringers experienced by some other low-end VMo phones. This little guy has a halfway decent assortment and of course you can buy more at obscenely overpriced rates from the online store, whose entrance fee (if you want to buy via phone) has been raised to 15 cents per day. Hey, they don't say "nickel and dime" for nuthin'...and yes, the ringer quality and loudness is perfectly fine, though not amazing in any way.

A few notes on the activation process for this phone: it is done over the air, or is that way as the primary method, rather than requiring you to type in programming information as with older phones. you just activate online, hit ##VIRGIN, start the activation and follow the on-screen, web-based instructions. Nifty if ya ask me. Also, this is the first Virgin Mobile phone I've had to use an MEID instead of an ESN. The first phone I got to do such a thing was the Nokia 2366i awhile back. Guess LG ran out of their block of ESNs and thus had to move on to the (much longer) MEIDs as phone serial numbers (something GSM did a long time ago, though heir system is called IMEI).

In closing, this is a great phone to go with the new Minute Pack options that Virgin Mobile just rolled out. it seems to be a fine phone for voice calling, and can get by okay with occasional text and web usage (and casual cell phone gaming...like PacMan etc). Bluetooth is a real plus for such a phone, and since the Flare has it, and it's reasonably easy to use, it works out. So if you're contemplating grabbing one of the "Minute Packs" that Virgin Mobile offers, and think that talking is going to be what you're gonna do on your phone (and your talking will be limited to Sprint's rather broad service area) this is a prime candidate that will almost undoubtedly cost less than the headset it's paired to. Just don't think you're going to save the world via high-speed simultaneous IM and stereo Bluetooth audiobook reading with this phone...or ay Virgin Mobile phone for that matter.

In my book, that's a thumbs-up.

By the way, once the battery runs out on this phone, I'll be giving it away to a lucky winner. Details to follow tomorrow...as in after 9:00 a.m. Mountain Time (it's still the 27th in my book).

Virgin Moible Slices Slice Price, Verizon INPulse Gets the Juke

Just a few sale notes while I'm on my hour-long lunch break that I worked into my class schedule this semester...I'll be getting the LG Flare review out probably this evening...

1. Want the Virgin Mobile UTStarCom Slice? That'll be $20. Yep, the Slice price is down in the dust now...it's not a horrible phone, though it lacks a camera and Bluetooth. I guess, hence the price. That and the fact that it's a rather old phone for Virgin Mobile's current lineup.

2. Verizon's INPulse plan now allows ou to buy the Samsung Juke music phone and put it directly onto their (read: Page Plus Cellular's, heh) service. All for a mere $125, which isn't horrible considering that it's the trendy hip phone of the moment, right? I'd personally go with a Krzr though.

Thanks to the folks on the forums for this info, and thanks to our sponsors (BabbleBug.com, lus the ones syndicated by Google's network) for helping me get the ad money needed to review (and give away!) phones. Support them; I might be able to earn enough this month to also get the Super Slice and review it, and probably even give it away to a lucky winner once the review is over. Thanks!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Virgin Mobile Flare: Review Coming Soon!

I got the Virgin Mobile Flare about 2:00, from FedEx (well, indirectly, due to my school's dorm mail policies). I had a class then so it was about 3:00 before I got to mess with it. But I have now played with it a fair amount and it seems pretty sweet. Look for a review here relatively soon (next day or two) with battery life added in a few days later. Hope this helps everyone! By the way, I'll probably be giving away this phone after I finish my review, and it'll have more than the "starter" amount of airtime on it. Look back here after the review for more details!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Nokia 1600 (Net10)

Here it is, folks: my review of the Nokia 1600 on Net10. I got the phone from Dollar General, for $30 plus tax, including $30 worth of airtime (300 minutes) and activated it on what is now AT&T via Net10's website. The process of activation and number-getting was easy enough. But what about the phone, which has (edited) proved out an astounding ten-day battery life?

First, the one problem with the phone I found, and this has gotta be a model-specific problem because I haven't heard of this problem from other Nokia 1600 users: the phone won't stop ringing on an incoming call, and if you get it to stop ringing, you have to restart the phone to get it working again. Pretty serious software bug, but I have heard of nobody else who has experienced this, so everyone is probably good to go getting this phone.

Why is everyone good to go with this phone? Because it is to GSM what the Nokia 2126i is to CDMA, or pretty close anyway. To get an idea of the size of the phone, I actually have a few pictures comparing it with the Nokia 2126i. Apologies for the quality; they were quick, low-light shots with my iPhone.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2149/2351575594_5fdc66d8b5_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2006/2350744795_6ba6824808_o.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2199/2351573670_5dac9a0da0_o.jpg

As you can see, form-factor-wise, the two phones are pretty near identical. Granted, the 1600 is a bit more boxy and, on Net10 at least, black, but they're basically analogs of each other. Great build quality on both, by the way.

Let me stop right here to say that if people are wondering whether the Nokia 1600 is a step up or a step down from the Nokia 2600 that preceeded it, I'd say it's a step down in some things, such as display quality (the 1600 screen is the same low-res affair as the one found on the Nokia 1600, or very similar at least) but a step up in others, such as sound quality...but I'll talk about that later.

Signal-wise, it has been awhile since I've tested a GSM phone on the now-AT&T network, but the 1600 seems to pull a decent signal in my rather informal testing. Then again, we're talking about using a network that was owned by a local cellular carrier, not the cellular hash that passes for AT&T in some other places.

As to ringtones and such, the Nokia 1600 offers a truckload of 'em, plus a few empty spots for I-don't-quite0know-what, and they're all loud and clear over the speakerphone. Some of them are the regular polyphonic ringers, but a surprising number are "real music" tones, which the phone does a nice job of reproducing. The vibrate motor is also solid.

Software is, no surprise, great; Nokia has been in the cell phone business since way back and it shows. The UI is easy to get around, though not particularly customizable. And yes, you get the requisite bunch of games and tools that all modern phones sport. Though that one calling bug is pretty important, I'm sure it''s just the unit I got, though I didn't return the phone yet because I'm now in Colorado and the phone is in Texas (I got it while I was down on spring break from school) so I don't have anything to compare it against, save other reviews.

My advice to everyone; if given the choice between this and the Motorola c139, get this, but that's obvious. Given the choice between this and the 2600, it's a bit of a toss-up, though I'd go with the 2600. Given the choice between this and a non-Nokia phone of similar features, I'd go with this little guy...again, it's basically the GSM equivalent to the Nokia 2126i that everyone loves so well, except minues a flashlight and plus real music ringers...and with Net10 service instead of Tracfone. As an added bonus, you can get the phone reconditioned from Net10's website or new from a few places (see the Tracfone Deals thread on the forums) for less than the value of the airtime on it, or at most for the value of the airtime on it (aka $20-$30). My verdict: good buy.

Stay tuned for a review of the LG Flare on Virgin Mobile in the next week or so, and reviews of the upcoming LG 400g and Motorola w175g phones when they come out on Net10 and Tracfone, respectively!

Reviews: Now Easy To Access

Not that it was hard to do (I tagged the reviews awhile back), but finally I got the code on the blog so they're easy to access. Just go to Categories on the righthand side of the page and click the Reviews link. Then scroll to your review of choice. If anyone has a better idea for review access, let me know...though I'm not going to switch to WordPress to get that advantage, unless someone can find me an easy way to move my posts over from here (Blogger) to there.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Flare Is On Its Way

Okay, not technically on its way yet. That'll have to wait until tomorrow. But I just now ordered, with money raised by the sponsors of the site (BabbleBug and Google AdSense), the LG Flare from Virgin Mobile. I'll review it as soon as I get it in, so everyone will know whether this is the next big thing in terms of Virgin Mobile phones...or not.

Speaking of reviews, I will be posting my take on the Net10 Nokia 1600 in the next few days. As to its underlying carrier, the phone was using former CellularOne\Dobson towers, which are now very much AT&T. It's actually the first GSM phone in my history to have a number local to my hometown, since CellularOne "owned" a local prefix and AT&T didn't until they bought those guys.

EDIT: My Flare has shipped as of earlier today (19th) and will be here Monday.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

A Few Deals...

Well I'm back from spring break now so I probably will have very little time to spend writing here, but then again I've got a Nokia 1600 review to post as soon as the battery runs low, as well as a Flare review when I get that phone and review it. But now, some deals:

1. The Virgin Mobile Cyclops (by Kyocera, see the review here and here) is now $30 at RadioShack and $28 at Target. I suppose it's worth that much...

2. The Virgin Mobile Kyocera Marbl and the LG Aloha are $15 in some places, $10 in others (the Aloha is ten bucks at RadioShack) or even less at still other places of sale (K-Mart will give you $10 off their price if you buy the Marbl with a $20 airtime card).

3 Some Walgreens stores (the ones that have the phone in stock) may well offer the Net10 Nokia 1600 for $20...with 300 minutes...meaning that I got ripped off when I bought it last week for review at Dollar General. That or the Walgreens pricing is insane. I'll go for the latter.

Thanks to the guys at the forums for pointing all this stuff out!

Friday, March 14, 2008

Want a high-end Amp'd...er...Page Plus Cellular Phone?

Then head over to UglyEric.com. One of the things his site offers, in addition to Page Plus "dealer" services, is a bunch of phones you can use with the service, activated and ready to go. Some examples? The Kyocera Jet from Amp'd (R.I.P.) is between $40 and $85, depending on how good condition you want the phone in. You can also grab the old Windows Mobile Samsung i600, which can incidentally connect to the internet over the little-known QNC protocol, even when running on Page Plus (just don't use it for anything but e-mail...it's a painfully slow 14.4 kilobits per second). There's the Audiovox 8910 for $40 (meh) and the Motorola v265 for $24 (hmm), and the LG vx6000 cameraphone thrown in for good measure at $25 (hmmmm).

There are a few other phones there, refurbished ones (as opposed to used ones), but they're the standard, rather old, fare sold by Page Plus Cellular, or in this case BabbleBug.com, who will give you reward points when you buy them toward the next refill you get with BabbleBug. If you're just interested in seeing those phones, clicking the BabbleBug banner to your right (they're a sponsor of this blog), then clicking the Prepaid Phones link to the top and right, will get you there. For all other phones though, the plac eyou desire us www.uglyeric.com, where the phone selection at least spans a wider age range, and the feature set a wider breadth, even if the highest-end phone is still a Kyocera.

GoPhone Update

Looks like AT&T no longer has the Treo 750 on GoPhone, which is to be expected; it's a smartphone. At least they still ahve the Nokia N75, which is quite high-end for those environs. And of course you can always bring your unlocked (i)phone into the mix if you need that sort of high-end action. Or just another AT&T phone, like the Treo 680. AT&T also has some decent deals on the low end, offering the (old but freakishly small) Pantech c3b and the (less old but bigger) Motorola v190 for $20 apiece. Not bad, all told.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Virgin Mobile's Website Gets Some Flare

You saw it in Best Buy, you saw it on best Buy's website. I even predicted its existence based on a bit of insider information before anyone else did. Now it's official...officially buy-able from Virgin Mobile's online store that is: the LG LG165 "Flare". With dual color displays and Bluetooth, as well as some decent styling that I'd say sets it apart from the usual Virgin Mobile lineup, I'd bet that this one is gonna be a winner, especially at the $30 price point at which it is starting out. Especially for the crowd that doesn't want, or isn't allowed to have, a camera on their phone.

At this point I'd like to say that I've already ordered one and a review will be up soon. But here's where my sponsor, BabbleBug, comes in, as well as the Google sponsored links that run across the top of this page: visit them and tell your friends to do the same if you like this site, and I get money which I can then spend on stuff like the Motorola w175g, the LG 400g (see the post below this one) and the Flare. Thanks in advance for your support, and with that I'll get back to posting :)

In other news, the Wild Card is back up to $100, no freebie messaging pack included.

New Phones On Net10 and Tracfone

Today Tracfone launched a phone. Net10 launched a different phone. Both were GSM. The Tracfone was the Motorola w175g, whereas the Net10 phone was the LG 400g. The former looks to be the replacement for the aging, lousy little beast known as the Motorola c139. With looks reminiscent of the Razr2 or the Motorola SLVR, albeit at a comparatively portly 0.55" in thickness, I don't think anyone is wanting to go back to the c139, especially since the w175g has a bigger screen and polyphonic ringtones (the c139 dosn't have 'em).

About the LG 400g, it looks to be the GSM version of the LG 200c, albeit a bit of an uglier duckling on first glance. We'll see when teh phone actually is available for sale. Neither it nor the Motorola w175g on the Tracfone side are, yet.

For more info on the phones, check out the posts on the forums about them:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Go4Prepaid/index.php?showtopic=204 (LG 400g)
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Go4Prepaid/index.php?showtopic=203 (Moto w175g)

Thanks to everyone who found out about these l'il guys!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

T-Mobile Reduces Activation Kit Prices

Well, T-Mobile is dropping prices again. Their SIM-only kit is now $5, right in line with what eBay sellers would charge for the same thing. So basically they're charging cost plus overhead to get you started with their prepaid service on any unlocked tri-band or quad-band GSM phone (iPhone anyone?). Cool beans.

Speaking of activation kits, if you're looking for one on AT&T or one for overseas, this blog's sponsor, BabbleBug, has both of 'em. ou can get Airvoice's GSM SIM for $8, with I'm-not-sure-how-much credit, AT&T's GoPhone SIM for $10 including $10 worth of credit (okay, $9.99, grr...) or Oxygen Wireless's GSM SIM kit for $4.99 with 50 minutes. They all run on the same (AT&T) network but hey, different strokes for different folks. There's also Roaming4Less, for overseas stuff, at $50 for a SIM. As an added bonus, you get $1 toward other BabbleBug purchases when you buy one of the AT&T-based SIMs, or $3 if you get the Roaming4Less SIM, handy when you need a refill.

So that was the "message from our sponsors", so to speak. I for one am glad the folks at BabbleBug have a product decent enough to recommend, and thus I recommend it :). To get it, just click on over to their site thorugh the sponsor banner to your right (you may have to scroll up or down to see it, but you know what I mean). Thanks for supporting this site, by the way!

Monday, March 10, 2008

LG 3280 Price Drop, Multicolored Oystrs

Just a few news bits scavenged from the forums...

1. The LG 3280, with nothing included in the way of double minute cards or the like, is down to $40 in some places. I'd say it's worth that much...it's certainly worth more than the LG 200c, but then again it is priced accordingly.

2. The Virgin Mobile Kyocera Marbl (reviewed here awhile back) is now available in two new "limited edition" colors. So, in all, you could "collect all five": standard, purple, sky blue, ocean blue and green. Or not...it's not a great phone anyway unless you just want to talk on it, and if you just want a phone to talk on spare yourself the hassle and give yourself more coverage with a Tracfone. Then again, this could be expected; awhile back there were three or so colors of the Kyocera Oystr (also for Virgin Mobile) available...if I remember correctly they were standard white, pink and green. Pastels, all of 'em.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Nokia 1600, Nokia 2126i at Dollar General, Phone Sales and more!

First, I'd like to thank the folks (particularly Turk and The Sweeper) contributing to the forum thread for Tracfone deals, Virgin Mobile deals and other phone deals on the forum. Particularly the one about Tracfone deals; that superthread is actually quite informative if you're looking to get a Tracfone. It is here:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Go4Prepaid/index.php?showtopic=22

I was out and about yesterday and today, and one of the things I spotted (phone-wise, among other things such as various phones at Walgreens, see my forum post about it) was a bunch of Nokia 2126i's...at my Dollar General store...for $15! "My" store meaning the one in Fredericksburg, Texas, as I'm on spring break right now.

Another phone I saw was the Nokia 1600 on Net10, also at Dollar General. It includes (as Net10 used to include, and now does again) 300 minutes and 60 days of service, for the same price as the minutes alone: $30. Naturally, I picked it up, and it is now running on CellularOne Dobson-turned-AT&T beside me, complete with a local number. Look here soon for a review!

Virgin Mobile Flare: Out At Best Buy

Hasn't been much news of late on the prepaid front (unless you count analog sunset, which doesn't account to much)...'til now...

Virgin Mobile's "Flare" phone (the LG LX165) is now available at Best Buy, both in stores and online. The price: $30, as expected. Thanks to forum member "The Sweeper", who has the phones, there are now some firsthand pictures of the cute little thing, albeit at cameraphone quality.

Can't wait to get my hands on one of these...the darned thing actually looks respectable despite being Virgin Mobile!

More Info (Virgin Mobile site) - http://www.virginmobileusa.com/phones/phoneDetail.do?skuId=VML165

Best Buy - http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8701924&type=product&id=1199495191194

Pictures - http://z7.invisionfree.com/Go4Prepaid/index.php?showtopic=189&view=findpost&p=11177592

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

A Word About Tracfone Promo Codes and forums

Look to your right, ladies and gentlemen. There is a link there, to what looks to be the most comprehensive list of Tracfone promotional codes on the 'net...thanks to Turk and everyone else on the Go4Prepaid forum! Over a hundred codes, and more of them "proved" recently than I know of other sites doing. It even looks to be more than that of the Tracfone_Users Yahoo group, which has been aroud for five and a half years now. That doesn't mean much in terms of keeping current promotional codes up, but it's something nonetheless.

Some other forum stats:
Users - 61
Posts - A little over 1500
Topics - Around 200
Hot topics - Tracfone promo codes, Tracfone sales, Virgin Mobile sales (Tracfone topics have over 125 posts apiece incidentally)
Age - 8 months

vs.

Tracfone_Users
Users - 2230+
Posts - 22900+
Age - 65.5 months

Then again, that's the biggest Tracfone forum anywhere. Everyone else seems to be...well...lower in posts, much lower. Tracfone_Users actually seems to be the largest, most ative cell phone related Yahoo group...interesting. Maybe they should join in here :)