Please note I'm reviewing both the Virgin Mobile service here and also the Oystr phone.
First the phone. I've had Virgin Mobile service for 2.5 years and have been using an old Audiovox flip phone which is very small. Lately the buttons on the Audiovox are getting a bit dodgy and my eyesight is getting worse too (I'm 43) so I wanted a phone with a bigger, brighter screen. I've been waiting for Virgin Mobile to have some decent phones and I was excited to see this Oystr phone available at such a decent price.
However I discovered that you get what you pay for. To me, this phone was only marginally acceptable. First off, the phone seems very buggy. Sometimes the keypad backlighting comes on, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the screen remains lit througout a call (that surely accounts for part of the battery problems people have been reporting), sometimes it doesn't. Setting the backlighting to turn off after 7, 15 or 30 seconds made no difference on my phone; it always turned off after 2 minutes or so -when it did not stay on throughout a call. The messaging is buggy also -to give one example, the automatic capitalization works after a period, but not after a question mark or an exclamation mark. This latter bug doesn't seem limited to my particular phone. I emailed Virgin Mobile about it and they emailed me back to say they replicated this on their Oystr also. How it is that a phone aimed at young people doesn't have good SMS software is simply astonishing to me -it's not like this is a new technology. I've been using SMS-equipped phones for years in Asia, where most people send SMS messages more than they make phone calls. All of these bugs were giving me a queasy feeling so I decided to switch to the Nokia Shorty, which I am much happier with. Nokia has, in my opinion, the simplest and easiest to use cell phone software. The sound quality of phone calls on the Nokia compared to the Oystr is far superior, in my opinion.
This phone seems okay for someone who really wants a flip phone at a low price. But if you use your phone or SMS messaging a lot I think you will find the annoyances of this phone rather great.
Now let me talk about the Virgin Mobile service. I think it's very good overall. I have a special set of circumstances -I'm often working outside the US for months at a time. Therefore it seems a waste to me to pay a large monthly fee for a phone which I will not be using perhaps half the year. Virgin Mobile's service fits the bill perfectly. So far as I can tell, this is the cheapest large and well-established cell phone service. If you want a cell phone only for emergencies, to keep in the car, to use when you arrive at or are picking someone up at an airport, etc., then I think you can't beat Virgin Mobile. The minimum you can pay with them to keep your phone in service is $80/year -and that $80 goes toward call time. You have to add $20 to your account every 90 days to keep your account active. Then minutes are 25 cents/minute for the first 10 minutes on any one day, and 10 cents/minute after than first ten minutes (Virgin Mobile does not actively advertise this deal anymore, but it is still available if you ask them or search carefully on their website).
In contrast, Net 10 seems cheaper -10 cents/minute all the time -but you have to pay a minimum of $150/year to keep the service active (this is as of Sept. 2006 -plans change frequently, of course).
In addition, Virgin Mobile's customer support is exemplary. Every time I have called them with a problem, I got a knowledgable person who spoke English fluently and was very helpful and friendly. Their website is excellent and easy to use. I explored switching to the Net 10 service when I discovered the Oystr was such a poor phone -Net 10 has some nice phones available. But calling their customer service was a nightmare. It seems clear to me they have followed the trend toward outsourcing their customer service to offshore call centers in order to save money and it was very difficult to get basic information about their service. Net 10 as well has a reputation (do a search on Google) for having a difficult time switching a phone number over to their service. I decided not to risk it and just stay with Virgin and the Nokia phone. I'm glad I did.
Overall I give Virgin Mobile very high marks for their service, but poor marks for the phone selection. I do not know why they do not offer one good solid higher-end Motorola or Nokia phone to attract more adults (and smarter people) to their service. I hope in the future they see that they could reach a whole new market with their good service if they offered phones not just aimed at trendy high-schoolers but also at (slightly) older folks too.
Okay, so all the bad reviews for this phone almost made me not buy it. However, I needed a phone, and this one had nice features, and texting is cheap, so I went ahead and bought it, figuring I could return it if I didn't like it.
So, the first thing I notieced is that it is a nice phone. It is a perfect weight, comfortable to hold. The white case has a pearl-sheen to it, and is solid feeling. It is a study and tight phone, very durable. The screen is 128 x 128, and it looks muay nice. I've seen $50 phones with screens of lesser quality. You can change the brightness and contrast. I lowered the contrast one level, and it looks nice and crisp.
The phone is easy to navigate. It played with it for two minutes and figured out where everything was. It has the standard virgin mobile graphics [pig with wings, donkey, dragon, robot, etc.] and they aren't distracting or anything. The menu's are easy to navigate and see. The fonts are clear and easy to read, not cramped or odd colored. It comes with 4 backgrounds: swirls, diamond pattern, skulls & roses, and multi-colored eagles. On their site you can download more for $2. The phone comes with themes also, and you can download more.
The ringtones are nice. They've now added a 'Euro ringer' because the older generation didn't like the superphonic [song] ringers. The Euro ringer sounds like a normal phone, but just a tiny bit more fancy so as to not be boring. You can download hundreds of ringers on their site. I currently have Super Mario Brothers theme. The sound quality of the ringer has improved, it sounds loud and clear. No more tin box or static sounding.
The text imput is simple. You can disable auto-text and what not, and typing is fast. It is simple to navigate email, text, and inbox. Speed dialing, one touch, etc. can all be enabled, and they are simple to use. You can change sounds, including 'text recieved' alarms. You can add signatures to text messages, and graphics. The phone has both text AND picture messaging, even though the phone doesn't have a camera. Texts are cheap compared to most. A standard text is 5 cents both ways. However, even on the prepaid plan, you can sign up for a monthly texting plan [while keeping your prepaid plan]. You can get 1000 text messages a month for $9.99. Not a bad deal, best you will find for texting anywhere, especially for prepaid.
Web browsing is simple and easy to navigate. With one press of a button, the phone will pull up the number of minutes you have remaining. You can do this 5 times a day for free. If you are low on minutes, you can register your credit or debit card or paypal account on your Account through their site. If you check your minutes and it is low, then you can simply enter a dollar amount to refill, hit OK, and you have added more minutes. Very simple and convient; very nice since you don't have to go to a store to buy a card. All minute plans are 18 cents a minute no matter what, and this includes tax.
Oka, onto the matter everyone cares about: battery life. With the first Oystr's, battery life was terrible. Beyond terrible. Maybe 10 hours if you were lucky. Luckily, after so much complaing, VM has corrected this problem. With the older phones, the backlight stayed on constantly, even when the phone was closed, which drained the battery. Now, you have more options. You can go into Menu > Settings >Display > Duration. By default, the backlight will remain lit even when the phone is closed, though the screen goes off and the backlight dims. The purppose of this is so that if it is dark, you can see a faint blue glow coming from your closed phone, making it sylish and easy to find.
If you wish to stop this, go into Duration and select disabled. This will disable the backlight WHEN THE PHONE IS CLOSED. When you open the phone, the keys will light up just like normal. The difference is, the backlight NEVER stays on when the phone is closed. Battery life goes back to the stated 7-8 days. The only thing is that when the phone is open, it takes a full two minutes for it to dim. So that is two minutes of talking when the phone will be using a little more juice. But it doesn't make a huge difference. If you purchase an Oystr, do what I said [disable the backlight] and the phone still stays lit or the battery doesn't work, you ahve been sold the older, not-thought-out-too-well model. You need to contact VM and get them to send you a new one.
Reception on this phone is good. I'm yet to have a call dropped. The calls go through fast. Since you can pull up reports on your minutes, you don't have to listen to the robot tell you how many you have left. The sound quality is good. I can go into the very lower level of the school library, which is all stone, and I still get reception without a problem.
Rates on this prepaid plan are very nice, especially when you take into consideration the reception quality. Pay by the minute is 18 cents always. Texts are 5 cents always, both to send and recieve, UNLESS you want to sign up for the monthly texting plan [1000 for $10]. You can sign up for the text plan WHILE remaining on the pay by minute plan; VM is the only one with this. Another thing I like about VM is that I can switch between monthly plans and prepaid plans as often as needed. With other prepaid plans, once you switch to a monthly plan, you can't go back to pay by minute. With VM you can.
Overall, I really like this phone. It was dirt cheap, $20, and it is NICE. If it had a camera, it would be perfect. It is strong, crisp, has an Xcellent screen, nice downloads, good ringer, has song ringers which are also unheard of for a prepaid cell at this price, has excellent and strong reception, on-demand minute statitics, instant minute purchasing, etc. I hightly recommend this phone, as long as it is the newer model.
Buy KYOCERA OYSTR PREPAID VIRGIN MOBILE CELL PHONE Now
My husband and I have been pre-pay cell phone users for about 5 years now, we were with Trac-Fone, the only reason we left Trac-Fone was because we got tired of carrying around a heavy phone and for some reason the flip phones available through Trac-Fone didn't work for us, we never had a problem otherwise with Trac-Fone or their customer service, but because I wanted a flip phone I decided to do some research on other pre-pay cell phones out there.
A few weeks ago we decided to go with Virgin Mobile Audiovox 8610 and were basically happy with the phone except the 1 complaint that many have expressed, the sound of the ringtone was way too low, other then that we were happy with the signal and customer service.
I decided to buy my mother a pre-pay phone and saw the Oystr on the Virgin Mobile website, she's not a big cell phone person either and we just wanted to get her the phone in case she needed it for an emergency, I got the phone and charged it and was amazed how great this phone was, the ringtones go to level 7 whereas the Vox 8610 go to level 5, the ring was so loud that I had to put it down to a level 3 for her and that's still loud, so I was happy about that, also this phone is easy to program and the speakerphone worked great, this phone also offers voice dialing, just program it and all you have to do is press the send button and say Home or whatever you choose and it dials it automatically.
We loved this phone so much that we decided to buy 2 more Oystr phones and are returning the Vox 8610's. We were able to buy the Oystr at Best Buy for $29.99. I can't find anything wrong with this phone at all, the outer shell is hard and seems less susceptible to damage, the ring is very loud, we get a great signal, and the phone notifys us if we have a voice mail message. You can also send text messages and browse the web with this phone but since we're not interested in that I can't comment on it.
You can also download ringtones etc. for this phone. I can't say enough good things about it, for the price we paid we got a really great phone. Virgin Mobiles customer service has been awesome also, we had no problem changing over the phone from the Vox 8610 to the Oystr.
Read Best Reviews of KYOCERA OYSTR PREPAID VIRGIN MOBILE CELL PHONE Here
at first, the battery charge didn't last the entire day. the screen stays lit up EVEN THOUGH THE PHONE IS CLOSED. it NEVER shuts off. so i just changed the setting, battery stays charged all day. PENNY TEXTING is awesome! just 9.99 a month for 1000 messages. this is the easiest way to stay in touch as a family. way cheaper than calling and wasting minutes. unlimited plans are awesome too as nights start at 7pm. perfect time for my 12 year old to get home, do homework, eat dinner, and then call her friends. OH you can also text message to a land line and the message gets read to you AND you have the option of replying to that message! that feature has come in handy already. nice, simple, no frills phone with a plan to match. you can also earn up to 75 bonus minutes a month just by watching some ads on the website. it's called sugar mama, try it!
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The phone has gotten a lot of hits for battery life. I had the phone run down quickly once and quickly realized that if you close the phone on a select few functions it doesnt turn off the screen. It maybe a slight knock on the phone but if you simply look at it you can tell if the screen is on or not. If it is just reopen it and close it and the screen will turn off.
As far as the phone itself it has a few games a few ringtones and a few images. You can buy more, but frankly I dont care.
You can set it to vibrate or to vibrate and have a ringtone. It has plenty of functions for a inexpensive phone, such as web access, texting, speakerphone.
The best part of the phone however is the quality of the calls, my relatives have these ridiculously expensive phones with cameras and doo-dads and they sound like you're talking inside a toilet. This little cheap phone has 5x better sound quality than theirs. This is the little phone that can and I love it.
I've been watching the price of external DVD writers for over a year. This particular item has dropped from over $400 to a little more than $200 (with a current $30 TDK rebate and careful comparison shopping --not neccesarily via Amazon) during that time. It has many positive points to recommend it, and only a few minor issues.
