My 3rd Blackberry, my 1st Virgin phone
I used to have T-Mobile, but needed to downsize my phone expenses. When I found out about Virgin's $25 for unlimited messaging & data & 300 minutes of calls, I pricked up my ears - I haven't needed thousands of minutes of talk time in over a year, communicate mostly with text messages, & WANTED a data plan but it was always too expensive before. Since I had a Blackberry 8320 before, & the reveiws for the 8530 were good, I went for that. I like the trackpad better than the trackball, which had started malfunctioning from getting squished in my back pocket (oops). The QWERTY keyboard is fine & feels good, though if you get a hard cover like I did you'll find it a bit difficult to press the outside buttons. The screen looks great, nice & bright. If you don't like the theme you can check online for free alternatives - I downloaded Skylark :)
The Blackberry software neatly transferred all my contact info to my new phone, plus I have a 2gb card (that's PLENTY of room). When I plug it in to charge, i get an analog clock screen saver (can be changed to digital) - looks kind of like an Omega. 2mg camera, no flash (nuts) but the pictures look fine, plus I have 5 different light settings, which eases the pain a bit. The touchpad zooms in & out with no glitches. Lots of features - video cam with sound! Notepad, calender, alarm, different tones...I've heard that you can't make your own ringtones from sound clips because Virgin wants you to buy downloaded tones, but that's not a big deal to me, I just WON'T.
And HEY, I never had a data plan before! I have Internet, & mapping! The GPS seems to work OK - I haven't used it much yet. There are lots of apps to download from App World, many of them free. What I DON'T like is the way the Blackberry site keeps ending the session before I've had time to do much more than find ONE thing that sounds interesting - seriously, folks, eBay lets me stay logged in for a whole day, & even my bank at least ASKS me if I want to continue my session. Sheesh,
What I also wasn't counting on was that I HAD to pay the extra $10/mo. for the Blackberry email features, which is really just a collator for your various email accounts. So instead of $25/mo I'm paying $35/mo (not including taxes etc) :/ I like the email feature, but not sure I like it $10/mo worth, so now I wish I'd gone for an Android phone. That said, if you're a Blackberry fan, this phone keep you happy & Virgin's plan will save you money. NO the coverage probably isn't as good as Verizon, but it's as good as T-Mobile (looks like I left just in time, as they just got eaten by ATT - poor T-Mobile, I really liked your service & you were good to me!). It's not like I NEED to have phone access while 10 miles offshore on Lake Michigan. I get signal pretty much everywhere I need it. Oh, and call quality is fine too, and the battery is good for...I don't know, all day or so depending on what I'm doing; I usually plug it in when I got to bed & there's always at least 50% left. Absolutely no complaints about this phone, it was a good deal.Read full review
