virgin

It's time to pony up for prepaid iPhones, avoid password scams and drop that mayor obsession:

The iPhone is coming to Virgin Mobile at the end of June. But you'll have to drop a hefty $650 to get the iPhone 4S, since there's no two-year contract. Plans start at $30 a month. It's cheaper in the long run to go prepaid with this plan instead of spending $200 upfront and paying for a more expensive monthly bill for two years (but you'll be limited with talk minutes). Virgin is on the Sprint network.

If Android … Read more

The iPhone is hitting the prepaid market in a big way with Cricket and Virgin Mobile offering Apple's marquee device. But can anyone afford it?

The key dilemma for a prepaid iPhone is exactly what makes the market so strong: the lack of a service contract. Consumers love the ability to jump in and out of a service, but that freedom comes at a price in the form of a higher upfront cost for the phone.

For the iPhone, that's a particularly tough pill to swallow. Cricket, owned by Leap Wireless, is charging $500 and $400 for the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, … Read more

Virgin Mobile will be the next prepaid service to get the iPhone, Sprint Nextel confirmed today.

Virgin Mobile follows Leap Wireless, which last week said it was getting the iPhone for its Cricket prepaid service. Like Cricket, the Virgin Mobile version of the iPhone won't be cheap; the 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S will cost $649, while the 8GB iPhone 4 will cost $549.

The appeal of a prepaid iPhone is the lack of a contract and lower monthly plan. Virgin Mobile will offer a $30 plan with 300 voice minutes, a $40 plan with 1,200 minutes, and a $50 … Read more

Virgin Mobile USA will soon be the latest pre-paid carrier to get Apple's iPhone 4S, according to a new report.

Citing people familiar with Sprint's plans, Dow Jones says that the iPhone will arrive on Virgin Mobile USA -- a wholly-owned Sprint subsidiary -- as early as next month.

Sprint joined AT&T and Verizon as the third major U.S. carrier to offer the popular handset last October.

The move would follow Apple's deal with Leap Wireless's Cricket, which marked a beginning of the iPhone's jump into the prepaid market. That deal, announced last week, … Read more

With its 2.8-inch touch screen, physical QWERTY keyboard, and 2-megapixel camera, the Virgin Mobile Venture was designed for first-time Android users. Seriously -- the ad copy surrounding it states that it wants you to "break into the world of Android-powered phones with the Venture by PCD."

Though it might not boast the best specs, the Venture does have a few things going for it, like its reasonable price tag of $79.99, solid data connection (from where we tested it, at least), and good call quality.

Plus, it has an onboard keyboard for anyone who likes the … Read more

Not everyone craves a cutting-edge smartphone. For many, a simple device with which to make voice calls and send quick texts will do. Virgin Mobile's latest wireless plan directly targets this type of cell user.

Called PayLo, for $40 per month the service offers a bottomless bucket of voice minutes, messages including texts and e-mail, and 50MB of Web access. What's the catch, you ask?… Read more

The LG Optimus Slider on Virgin Mobile is the successor to early 2011's LG Optimus V -- only, it hardly even looks like it.

Like a cousin who spent his summer camp days working out and beefing up only to become unrecognizable by the time September rolled around, the Slider somewhat resembles the V with a little more junk in the trunk.

But to be fair, that extra "junk," is actually a slideout QWERTY keyboard. With four rows of generously sized keys and navigational arrows, the handset is great for people who text all day and want … Read more

Starting today, Virgin Mobile customers who will purchase their LG Optimus Elite between now and July 18 on a Virgin Mobile Beyond Talk account will be able to activate Google Wallet.

Users must sign up for Google Wallet within seven days of purchasing their Elite. Customers will also get a Google prepaid card with $25 worth of credit included.

The Elite is Virgin Mobile's first smartphone to be equipped with NFC, or near field communication, which allows services like Google Wallet to communicate wirelessly with other NFC-enabled products within short distances.

The device is available now for $150. It … Read more

A person who claims to be a former member of the Anonymous hacker group has claimed responsibility for knocking The Pirate Bay offline for over a day.

The claim is unconfirmed but a person calling himself "Nyre" left a message on Pastebin yesterday, saying he was the person who launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on The Pirate Bay, one of the world's best-known file-sharing services. The site was back up this morning.

As for the reason Nyre claims to have launched the attack: "The Pirate Bay was a press-release Website for Anonymous." … Read more