Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one.

[jmart981]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

One can hope Virgin Mobile confirms the LG Marquee phone soon, if i remember correctly, it took a good while before the Optimus V came out after the Optimus S (sprint) version

 

[camf3xu]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

One can hope Virgin Mobile confirms the LG Marquee phone soon, if i remember correctly, it took a good while before the Optimus V came out after the Optimus S (sprint) version

optimus s - October 31st 2010
optimus v- February 1st 2011

 

[jdcnosse]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

optimus s - October 31st 2010
optimus v- February 1st 2011

5 months. That's like a decade in phone years. lol

It's already been more than 5 months since the OV came out.

 

[OakIris]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

5 months. That's like a decade in phone years. lol

Technically, only 3 months... Still, a long time to wait. Again, look at the positive side - plenty of time to find out how the phone does in the real world with actual end users.

Holly

 

[LeslieAnn]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Based on previous Virgin phones...
Everything points to us having the OB before new years, for $200.
There is a small possibility $250, but there is also a chance it could be less.

Date:
We usually get them 3 months after Sprint, however, Sprint seems to be trying to make Virgin more current, so it's possible, we could see it sooner. Don't hold your breath.

Price:
In the past, Virgin was $100 more than Sprint for the phone.
The OB is to retail for $100, however, that is after a $50 rebate. Keep in mind, that by December the Sprint price could be down to $100 or less, without a rebate.


Oh, and it looks like it will have GB pre-installed. Early OB's had Froyo, the Sprint OB has GB, which testers have claimed greatly improved how it runs. Triumph may remain their top phone, but I think the OB will be the better phone to get.

I'm almost more curious about their plans for the OV at this point. If it does drop to $130 or less (assuming they keep it), imagine the flood of new OV users. The more using it, the more devs we have.

 

[cole2kb]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Based on previous Virgin phones...


I'm almost more curious about their plans for the OV at this point. If it does drop to $130 or less (assuming they keep it), imagine the flood of new OV users. The more using it, the more devs we have.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but...does the OV even need more devs? There are multiple options as far as stable ROMs go, in both Froyo and GB, as far as a lowly end user like myself can tell, there isn't much more to do minus minor tweaks. Maybe I'm just lucky with how stable my phone seems to be.

 

[one80oneday]

Based on previous Virgin phones...
Everything points to us having the OB before new years, for $200.
There is a small possibility $250, but there is also a chance it could be less.

Date:
We usually get them 3 months after Sprint, however, Sprint seems to be trying to make Virgin more current, so it's possible, we could see it sooner. Don't hold your breath.

Price:
In the past, Virgin was $100 more than Sprint for the phone.
The OB is to retail for $100, however, that is after a $50 rebate. Keep in mind, that by December the Sprint price could be down to $100 or less, without a rebate.


Oh, and it looks like it will have GB pre-installed. Early OB's had Froyo, the Sprint OB has GB, which testers have claimed greatly improved how it runs. Triumph may remain their top phone, but I think the OB will be the better phone to get.

I'm almost more curious about their plans for the OV at this point. If it does drop to $130 or less (assuming they keep it), imagine the flood of new OV users. The more using it, the more devs we have.

The Sprint OB is $350 off contract and VM is usually $100-150 less than that figure. VM OB will come out in about three months. Also the OV came out @$109 then the price went up due to demand. I see it getting discounted to $99 like the Intercept soon.

 

[LeslieAnn]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Please don't take this the wrong way, but...does the OV even need more devs? There are multiple options as far as stable ROMs go, in both Froyo and GB, as far as a lowly end user like myself can tell, there isn't much more to do minus minor tweaks. Maybe I'm just lucky with how stable my phone seems to be.

Well, let's see, for supported roms, we currently have:
IHO and Harmonia.

Granted there are several making IHO, but of them, how many are doing more than swapping a few apps or doing pure builds? Realistically, only a few are much different than the others. All other devs have left and their roms have been left unsupported.

Yes, there are stable options, but that doesn't equal supported or being updated. Of the stable ones, how many would you realistically run or recomend running today? Stock + Xionia was fantastic in it's day, but it's way behind Harmonia in pretty much every way. Same with Aphrodite, which came from Stock + Xionia. Rodimus? Again, great, in it's day. Things have changed considerably since those were all released.

The Sprint OB is $350 off contract and VM is usually $100-150 less than that figure. VM OB will come out in about three months. Also the OV came out @$109 then the price went up due to demand. I see it getting discounted to $99 like the Intercept soon.

Um, no.
The OV came out at $149 on Feb. 1st. Several of us got them up to a week sooner, myself included.
A bit later it went on sale for $129-139, then immediately rose to $199, and then fell back down to $149.

LG Optimus V is seriously, officially official for Virgin Mobile at $150 -- Engadget

You can however find then for $129 in stores currently,. $119 on Amazon supposedly.

 

[Eollie]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Please don't take this the wrong way, but...does the OV even need more devs? There are multiple options as far as stable ROMs go, in both Froyo and GB, as far as a lowly end user like myself can tell, there isn't much more to do minus minor tweaks. Maybe I'm just lucky with how stable my phone seems to be.

Currently there is three active dev's, compare that to the development of other phones. The Thunderbolt has at minimum 8 devs and many more kangers.

Of our three two are working on the same code only tweaking it with other mods. The builders are plenty right now, I dont think people like Jerryscript and mgr66 consider themselves devs just bacon makers.

The size of the phone is a big deal for me. I hated to carry my DX around in my pocket it felt like I had a small brick in my pants. I always was scared I was going to break it when I had to squat down and it didnt shift properly in my pocket. I tried to carry it in my back pocket a couple times and it felt even more akward. The defined squareness of the phone make it very akward to carry. Rounded corners and edges are a very important part of the phone design.

I think if all goes well I will be picking up a Black once it comes out. Im still up in the air tho, the service coverage for me is starting to be a big factor and even tho I love the 25$ plan driving 15 miles south I lose coverage and dont regain coverage for another 75 miles. So I might be looking at sprints version of the Black.

 

[zedorda]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Again like before this is not a linkable fact but I give this info as is (unsupported).

"The OB will be released at $250 with some local area only sales for $229 with a $30 rebate about a week after release. The release date was a vague Nov."

This info made me think this might be a Black Friday item that will to get people in the door at certain tech stores. Just my 2 cents.

Optimus Black on Black Friday - the pun seems unavoidable

 

[Whyzor]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I think if all goes well I will be picking up a Black once it comes out. Im still up in the air tho, the service coverage for me is starting to be a big factor and even tho I love the 25$ plan driving 15 miles south I lose coverage and dont regain coverage for another 75 miles. So I might be looking at sprints version of the Black.

Wouldn't it make sense to try a sprint PRL on your OV? Since if you get the OB for Sprint it'd be using the same.

 

[jdcnosse]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Wouldn't it make sense to try a sprint PRL on your OV? Since if you get the OB for Sprint it'd be using the same.

I agree. Unless Sprint is putting up new non-VM towers near you (and soon), you could get the OB and find out that you have the same crappy coverage...or you could get better. Never know until you try

EDIT: I mention non-VM towers as that's the only way you'll get a signal difference if you switch, because if they are new Sprint towers that also get to be used by VM, then your coverage would improve no matter who you went with (in terms of Sprint/VM)

 

[cole2kb]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I agree. Unless Sprint is putting up new non-VM towers near you (and soon), you could get the OB and find out that you have the same crappy coverage...or you could get better. Never know until you try

Semi related: how is everyone's outlook on expanded coverage for VM in the near future? If Sprint is trying harder to get it's MVNOs newer phones faster, especially with a recent price hike, I'd hope they would try to open it up more.

 

[LeslieAnn]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Currently there is three active dev's, compare that to the development of other phones. The Thunderbolt has at minimum 8 devs and many more kangers.

Of our three two are working on the same code only tweaking it with other mods. The builders are plenty right now, I dont think people like Jerryscript and mgr66 consider themselves devs just bacon makers.

There are a lot of people here with way more experience and knowledge than myself.
I'm more of a hack than a dev, but I gave up fighting peoples definition of it.

Most people think if you do anything, you are a developer and in some ways, that is sort of true, where is the line actually drawn? Most people working on roms are working off other peoples work. For the record, anyone with a rooted phone could have built Aphrodite.

 

[Kotton]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

Hardware keyboards are going away because they add bulk, cost, & complexity to making a phone. The bigger screens make soft-keyboards easy to use, plus you can do swiping and it's easier to customize different languages for the manufacturers. A lot of people I know who used to swear by HW keyboards, have converted just fine to using soft-keyboards.

touch screens are a PITA to use for gaming though, I mean emulators.

 

[mknollman123]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I agree on gaming with emulators being hard without a KB, but the people that do this are as few and far between as people that root. I know a lot of us here do it, but I am guessing we represent less than 2% of android users (made up statistics are right 60% of the time everytime).

I love keyboards and really miss the BADA$$ KB that was on my touch pro 2 - but since my switch to Android I have been on TS only devices. I would definitely consider a KB device tho - heck I almost bought the Intercept when I switched to VM due to its faster processor and the KB until I read that it was a buggy POS - thanks again forums.

As I said above - I can haul the mail on a virtual KB, but I would still take a GOOD physical keyboard anyday.

 

[rweeks]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I was able to get my hands on the OB yesterday at Target, and now I really want this phone...
Has anyone heard when it will be coming to VM ? or is it still speculated for end of the year.

 

[LeslieAnn]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I was able to get my hands on the OB yesterday at Target, and now I really want this phone...
Has anyone heard when it will be coming to VM ? or is it still speculated for end of the year.

Still expected December to January.
Early January fits, but it seems foolish to miss the Christmas rush.

 

[kalaniboy]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I thought the LG Marquee was just a rebranded Optimus Black. According to this video http://youtu.be/p5GnuWQLeO4, the Marquee has 4GB of onboard memory; vs 2GB on the Black. Nice

I really hope this makes it to the VM version.

 

[OakIris]

Re: Has the Black been officially announced? My guess is this one

I thought the LG Marquee was just a rebranded Optimus Black. According to this video LG Marquee Unboxing - YouTube, the Marquee has 4GB of onboard memory; vs 2GB on the Black. Nice

I really hope this makes it to the VM version.

Too bad Sprint changed the box to an ordinary one (compare to this unboxing video to see what I mean: LG Optimus Black unboxing and hardware tour - YouTube VM will probably just use a plain brown wrapper!

I checked the Marquee memory specs on the Sprint site:

Memory 512MB/2GB (RAM/ROM), Micro SD (up to 32GB) *2GB micro SD card supplied with device

I looks as if Bob of wirefly.com was incorrect about the 4 GB internal memory.

It still looks like a very nice phone and I look forward to it becoming part of VM's line up. (I've yet to see any end user reviews of the phone, though.)

Holly