A Cheap "Extra"
I bought this phone as a cheap "extra" phone for me to give out as a "business number" to customers. At the time, I actually was on T-Mobile with a Blackberry Bold that I was in love with but I didn't want to give out my personal phone number to strangers. Ialso  wanted to break into the Android market, and see what all the fuss was about.

I must say that after that, there was no turning back. The Optimus V on Virgin Mobile was on of the best little Android smartphones that I've ever had in terms of price, and reliability. It turned me onto Android too.

It had reception everywhere, because it supposedly has two internal antennae, as opposed to one, like most phones. This made it have reception almost anywhere (in comparison to my expensive smartphone on T-Mobile), aside from bomb shelters and fully enclosed concrete library basements of course.

When I bought my Optimus V, it was of the first batches that was able to do/make a wifi hotspot right out of the box (with the download of Quick Settings from the Market--free). The newer Optimus V's that are being sold now have it disabled, even with the downloading of quick settings.

The fact that I was able to make a portable wifi hotspot for myself was in itself one of it's best qualities!

I was paying $25 a month on Virgin Mobile, on their Beyond Talk Plan for 300 minutes, unlimited texts, and unlimited data (3G) and that was including using the wifi hotspot for my laptop whenever I needed to too! Though, I believe that now, it costs $35 for this same bundle because Virgin Mobile rose their prices--minus the wifi hotspot ability. It's still a good deal though!

The Optimus V always had reception, it lasted pretty long between charges (2 days of average use), it was durable, the phone and screen was good at keeping up with my typing, and it was generally a very reliable phone.

The price was also very good for a NO CONTRACT smartphone. I paid $130 for mine initially, but there were many opportunities to buy this phone for about $100 and even $70 once. VERY good deals. I ended up buying a couple extrawhen it was really cheap because I really liked it.

Call quality was always pretty good. I didn't have any echoing, dropped calls, problems with sound, or breaking up.

Some Issues
The screen is plastic so it scratches kind of easily. It's also on the smaller side so it's a little hard to type on the keyboard if you've got bigger fingers.

One thing that REALLY bothered me was that it had little internal memory for apps. It allocated only about 100mb for apps, so I has only a few downloaded before the phone would chime that there was no more memory left. I ended up having to delete apps to make room for other ones. I could move apps to the memory card, but sometimes they didn't work or work well unless it was actually on you phone memory.

If it had more internal memory for apps, it'd be great.

Overall
The Optimus V would be perfect for a teenager that you might want to keep on prepaid, or for someone who needs little to no minutes, but plenty of text messages and data (unless you up your plan to something with more minutes, then you could have plenty along with text and data). I'd recommend this phone even with it's cons to friends as a good starter android phone, or a cheap, reliable Android phone because it's pros outweigh the cons. It's not a really FANCY FANCY smartphone, but it gets the job done!

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 130
Recommended for: Professionals On-the-Go - Internet and Email is a Must!