Advice needed: Time to upgrade?

[Redchigh]

Ive been on my Op V for the last 5 years, and shared many pains (tws, battery problems) and triumphs (yay, jellybean. YAY KITKAT!!!)

It served me well, for what i needed (Texting, light browsing, email).

It has its problems, (still pretty poor battery life, even on gb. Poor signal in rural areas) and now that Im working for a security agency, those inconveniences have become dealbreakers.

My question, is should I upgrade my phone (and remain on virgin) or drop them both?

Is it possible that upgrading to a LTE phone could improve my signal?

If not... Any advice for coverage providers to consider? Im single, so preferably something thats a good deal on its own. Contract is okay...

 

[Aquila]

Yes... it is time to upgrade But then again, I always think it is time to upgrade. I believe that you will see better battery and signal from a modern device, but I also believe you'd get better service through a different carrier as well. IIRC Virgin runs off of Sprint's network (it is their subsidiary) which means that using Sprint would possibly be similar or better, but depending on your area other carriers could be substantially better. There are a couple of apps and websites that can give information about network stats and popularity in your area, but if at all possible I recommend trying the networks out if you have that ability.

 

[mister_zero]

The only reason I keep my V is I'm grandfathered into Virgin's old $25/month plan (300 minutes + unlimited text and data). I hate the idea of paying more money now (for a new phone) so I can pay more money later (for service).

I've been running BobZhome's ICS rom with an SD-EXT partition for the past month or so, and I've had better battery life than with the stock Froyo ROM, GB, or OS2SD KitKat. My CPU is set to either 320/806 or 480/806, interactive governor. That said, my wife's Optimus F6 still has significantly longer battery life. My only real complaint with this ROM is the status bar clock doesn't work, but I've tried several clock widgets from Play and they all work fine, so no biggie.

I read on Reddit that if you buy a Virgin phone online, and activate it yourself, you can stay grandfathered into the old plans, but it looks like that only works for 3G phones, and none of the new 3G phones Virgin offers look all that compelling to me, although the Awe would be a step up from the V (1.2 GHz chip, bigger screen, front facing camera).
www(dot)reddit(dot)com/r/Frugal/comments/26t233/is_it_possible_to_upgrade_virgin_mobile_phone_and/

MetroPCS's plan pricing is a better value than Virgin these days, IMHO.