Virgin Mobile is playing to win in prepaid, but they’re burning their most savvy customers in a major way… and people are taking notice.
Putting it bluntly, Virgin Mobile is shortchanging their customers on firmware updates, compared to other carriers, and even Sprint’s own postpay brand. It’s not acceptable, it’s wrong, and it needs to be fixed. Read more for the examples, reasoning, and tough love.
It’s been a long time since we were the ones pushing for Firmware Over the Air. We’d like to think we changed the industry, just a little bit, by pushing carriers and manufacturers to embrace the practice. It finally came full circle a few weeks ago with the release of iOS 5, making Apple the last manufacturer to implement it.
Apple actually was doing okay with their iTunes-style over-the-wire updating, but the rest of the industry hasn’t done so well. Virgin Mobile is sadly, the latest culprit in mismanaging the maintenance of their devices.
When the LG Optimus V came out, it was not alone. In the Optimus One family of devices, LG touted that the whole family of devices would get Android 2.3, Gingerbread. And, they made good on that, the Optimus S on Sprint has been updated, for example. Same hardware across all these phones, so equal treatment by carriers, right? Wrong.
Virgin Mobile has informed PhoneNews.com that there are no plans to update the Optimus V to Gingerbread. It’s simply unethical. Forcing people to pick up a newer phone, just to get Gingerbread… especially when LG is happy to offer up the upgrade to the carrier!
From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense, albeit evil sense. If you deny the tech-savvy Gingerbread, they’ll go out and buy a new handset, and sell the old one on eBay. Thus, through price discrimination, you create a new market of super-cheap, used Android phones. Most people don’t care about firmware versions, so the eBay market will be saturated with super-cheap Optimus V’s that go for $50 to $75. More (new) customers for Virgin Mobile.
It doesn’t help things that the Optimus V is practically unusable at this point. The phone’s limited internal storage is gobbled up by a swath of almost-mandatory Google Apps updates. When you’re finished updating Google Maps, Google Search, Google Voice Search, Gmail, and YouTube… you’ve used up most of the phone’s internal storage. This is more of an architectural problem in Android (which will be fixed in Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich), but updating the Optimus V to Gingerbread would make these updates more optional, and alleviate the problem.
Oh, wait, one more insult on the Optimus V. There are two firmware versions out there, and you can’t upgrade. LG issued initial units with firmware V4. Later they issued version V7 to correct problems with the radio (and disable mobile hotspot… left in the phone by mistake). Unfortunately, you can’t update to V7. Not only is it not offered over-the-air, but when you run LG Software Update… the update fails, every single time.
We’ve brought these issues to the attention of Virgin Mobile. They haven’t changed. We don’t want to see history repeat itself. So, we’re now standing on our somewhat high-class soap box, and we have a message…
… Virgin Mobile, get your act together on firmware, or hire us to manage it for you.
This is a great article! Especially since a lot of people are switching to prepay services like boost and virgin mobile. This is not only hurting customers but android overall. Because now people that buy the optimus and its their first android phone are going to say that android sucks when in reality its the phone and in this case the cell company that doesn’t want to provide an update that will make the phone work better. I hope this changes. Unless they are doing it to make more money(im sure this is one of the reasons) and they are trying to convince people to stay on postpay(sprint) to keep them on 2 year contracts.
Virgin’s answer seems to want their subscribers to upgrade their device. The new Optimus slider seems to address your concerns, while continuing to delay any firmware updates to the Optimus V. This is not acceptable, but then again it is expected from a Sprint owned company.
Personally, after getting constant “low memory” messages, I am boycotting Sprint and Virgin Mobile. They sold me a dud of a device as far as I am concerned!
My renewal is on the 18th and I’ve already disabled my credit card information. If they do hit my card I will file the next day in small claims, and I’ll be asking for the cost of the phone too.
Virgin Mobile was supposed to be the flagship line of prepaid, with a slight edge over Boost Mobile,also owned by Sprint.However,I agree that its unacceptable to neglect firmware updates,why some updates are for bug fixes alone. Yet Androids evolving,and yes 2.3 is here,and soon enough 4.0 ics (ice cream sandwhich). So come on Virgin Mobile, as your customers we do have a choice,and if this keeps up it wont be you.
I agree with this BUT, here is the thing, LG had stated that the LG Optimus One series had to little of processor speed to support Gingerbread, Sprint didn’t fully update their Optimus S, they pulled the update half way through because it was Bricking the Phones. 600 mghz isn’t enough to support it. So i actually think Virgin Mobile was doing the right thing in this case because it could have ruined a lot of phones. They do need to be more efficient with their updating though, the Motorola Triumph is their best and most powerful phone and yet its stuck on 2.2 with many hardware issues that 2.3 can fix. In the Case of the Optimus, it is what it is. In the case of the Motorola Triumph, they need to do something soon because its annoying for us MT customers.
HTC Wildfire has a 600mhz processor and gingerbread. So it’s not the processor.
This Optimus not supporting Gingerbread is a lot of BS! There is a new Sprint MVNO (Republic Wireless) that uses a modified Optimus (UMA chip etc.) that is Gingerbread right out of the box! Manufactures are just taking advantage of Google’s position of not giving a dam, that allows for this confusion!
This is the same reason that manufactures put out beta phones so the burden of testing a pre-release phone is put on it’s customers.
If you think Optimus V is mismanaged, take a look at Motorola Triumph. That’s an even bigger fiasco.
Then there’s a whole new crop of small seen Android phones for the “poor relatives”of
Small screen phones for poor relatives of sprint.
Correction added
“or hire us to manage it for you.” Lol, nice job. You would probably do a much better job from the sound of it! I have the Triumph, the slightly higher end phone from VM, and they have also not released the 2.3 update for it, which is really annoying. Apparently with cm7 you can hack it on there, and I think I might just do that…
Just to clear up the confusion about the Optimus statements from LG…
Yes, LG did initially say that initial Optimus phones (V, S, T, etc) were not powerful enough for Gingerbread. This triggered outrage from the community, as it showed comparable devices that could run Gingerbread.
LG later retracted such comments and commited to updating the entire lineup to Gingerbread.
Sprint has pulled the Optimus S update, citing issues, but the official word from Sprint still stands that Gingerbread for the Optimus S will be re-released. In the mean time, a downgrader has been offered to Optimus S customers so they can fall back to Froyo while waiting for an updated upgrade.
And, finally, the official word from Virgin Mobile still stands at their last statement. We’ve received no response from LG or Virgin Mobile to this report as of today.
Something I don’t get, the Optimus that republic mobile is using is Gingerbread. How did they do that?
Well folks, over at xda developers the humble Optimus is in development for an Android 4 ice cream sandwich ROM.
The future is less clear for the Triumph, but it is a more capable phone.
I have an OptimusV from Virgin and I love it! I like running the OG firmware, everything works, hotspot, custom unsigned apps, everything. Very nice sized phone, it actually fits in your pocket. Smooth edges and affordable plans. I’ve seen them at BB for $100.
I have thye Samsung intercept which got the Froyo Update after people complained about not being able to answer calls without locking up or slow performance! it come with 2.1 eclair before months of waiting for froyo! It’s absolutely about $$$! to upgrade all their phones through updates would not be prudent for them since the phones will most cretainly be replaced with a newer model within a year or so! It sucks big time but that life on Virgin mobile!
Disappointed to find that VM is not updating the Optimus V. Keep us updated if they change their mind. I want to get rid of all the crapware that is taking up all the internal memory.
Got an Optimus V on black friday for $49.99. I rooted the phone, installed a custom rom, and never looked back. Gingerbread 2.3.7 works great đŸ™‚