For those people who are looking for a great deal for a portable hotspot, or anyone who wants a smartphone but isn't willing to pay the typical rates, Virgin Mobile is finally offering a deal and a phone worth considering. For years now, Virgin Mobile has been offering incredible deals to U.S. consumers. But wait, where are the Virgin Mobile stores? Virgin isn't a traditional U.S. carrier, preferring to work on a pre-paid model and offering access on Sprint's network. In fact, Virgin Mobile USA is not even it's own entity anymore, as Sprint bought them in 2009 but retained the name. It's fascinating that Sprint chooses to maintain the old Virgin Mobile model but offers dramatically different plans for use on their network. Presumably, the bargain-basement, pre-paid model has enough traction in the U.S. that they thought it was worth maintaining.
Sprint currently offers better deals through Virgin than through their own stores. They also do so without requiring a contract. The current phone plans on Virgin are as follows:
You'll note that even the most expensive plan is less than the Simply Everything plan on Sprint that is now effectively $79.99 for any 3G phone. Virgin rates are predicated on their model of not subsidizing a phone and locking customers into a contract. As a result, they've always offered phones that were less compelling than Sprint's, but they've now broken through with a killer phone and a backdoor value that is causing it to fly off the shelves.
The best review comes from Seth Weintraub on CNN's Fortune page. As he explains, the LG Optimus V is actually a quite competent Android phone that many customers would be happy with. Also included in his review is the allusion to the fact that you can download an app from the Android Market to enable the mobile hotspot functionality for free. What this means is that on a super-cheap plan, you can have a quality Android phone and share that internet connection with a laptop or tablet for no extra charge. You also have the option of going month-to-month, turning phone service on and off. The availability of Virgin Mobile pre-paid cards in stores also gives users the freedom of never having to talk to their carrier. The Optimus V is a mere $150 off-contract, by far the best phone in the U.S. that's available for that low of an unsubsidized price.
Weintraub's review and video explain almost everything that's necessary, but it's interesting to reveal how some of this is possible. In terms of using the Optimus V as a WiFi hotspot, this is actually an error by Sprint/Virgin in not effectively locking down this feature. Starting with Android 2.2 "Froyo," creating a WiFi hotspot is a native feature, baked into the very core of the operating system. Unlike on the Nexus One or Nexus S, however, this feature is almost never available for free. The reason is that in the U.S., phones come to consumers through carriers who choose to modify the software to their advantage. So while tethering is a native feature, on almost every phone on Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, the setting to enable tethering leads to a carrier page on which to pay for the service. The cost is anywhere from $20-$40 on top of the existing plans.
The LG Optimus V, however, is a special animal. LG made many different variations of it's Optimus One line in 2010 and it proved to be a massively popular series due to its price, styling, and relatively good performance. When Sprint chose to adopt the phone as the Optimus S, they introduced it as part of their Sprint ID service, a new "feature" that they're making available across almost all of their phones. Sprint ID offers an almost stock Android ROM, a very rare option, in exchange for a system that allows customers to download packages that consist of a pre-selected collection of apps. The existing Sprint ID phones appear to have very few customizations other than the ability to install these packages and some options having been removed.
Removing an option, however, is not the same thing as disabling a capability. This is particularly obvious when observing the differences between the Sprint Optimus S and the Virgin Optimus V. The phones are have identical hardware and the software is almost the same as well. The biggest difference in the software appears to be the removal of the Sprint ID button. Other than that, it's a nearly completely stock Android 2.2 build. As such, there are a number of apps in the Android Market that are able to reveal settings that may not be readily available to the user. The app Weintraub mentions in his video is the app "Quick Settings," which does nothing other than give a control panel of options. Included in these options is the setting for Mobile Hotspot, and sure enough, turning that on enables the hotspot with no questions asked. The settings work because nobody actually removed the capability from the phone. Sprint and Virgin simply hid it, which took the least effort.
So why spend this much time talking about a relatively cheap phone and carrier? The reason is that using all of this to one's advantage results in the cheapest MiFi, or portable hotspot device, available. The $25 plan offers unlimited data, far cheaper than on the big U.S. carriers. If 300 minutes is not enough for someone to use as their main phone line, the $40 plan gives them 1200 minutes, more than almost anyone needs. Virgin does offer a MiFi hotspot device on a $50 unlimited plan, but that is obviously twice the price of the workaround for the Optimus V detailed here. Even at twice that price, Virgin appears to have had plenty of interest, since they recently started throttling speeds after the 2.5 GB mark, rendering their use of the word "unlimited" somewhat questionable. It remains to be seen if Virgin will do the same to their phone customers who use a lot of data. They haven't said so yet, and it's unlikely they would do so without some warning. Until they make changes, The LG Optimus V is an incredible deal for either the road warrior or the bargain smartphone buyer.