Virgin adds another payLo plan and phone

October 21, 2010/Joe Pawlikowski

Virgin Mobile introduced its payLo plans in July, I wondered what kind of advantage they offered. Customers basically had to pay $20 for the right to get minutes and messages at a certain rate — and the rate isn’t that much better than the industry standard, on the whole. Yesterday Virgin announced a new payLo plan, this one costing $30 per month. It includes 1,500 minutes, 500 messages (SMS, MMS, and IM), and 10MB of data. This makes it different than the other payLo plans, because it’s more like an actual monthly plan. You can sign up for the plan at Virgin Mobile’s website. They also announced a new handset…

That’s the Kyocera s2300, a phone that looks older than it is. The main advantage is the full QWERTY keyboard, because there’s not much else included. It has a 2.2 inch display and 1.3 megapixel camera, hardly features worth bragging about. It will cost $70 when it becomes available later this month. ]]>

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2 Comments

  1. Steve on October 22, 2010 at 9:14 pm

    Looks alot like the Kyocera Loft. Rather save my money for the Intercept



  2. David A. on November 4, 2010 at 10:51 pm

    We have the Loft – nice phone, super clear call quality, easy to type keyboard, nice web browser (Opera Mini works fab). I’m probably going to switch it to the paylo plan with 1500 minutes + plus the data features for $ 30/mo.
    I also just got the new smartphone, Samsung Intercept – more $$$, slightly easier to access interface, and has mp3 player.
    But on the whole, I think the Loft has an edge on simplicity, while having nice data features & web capability.
    These two phones compliment each other. If Apps are important to you – extra software features – then the Intercept smartphone with the Android / Google OS is the way to go. But for my wife, that would be waaay too complicated. She just needs the main phone features – maybe I can coax her to text or use a web page or RSS feed, which the Loft is certainly capable of doing nicely.
    Loft is $ 70, Samsung Intercept is $ 249 big difference, but still is one of the more affordable smartphones.
    One thing is sure: with the prepaid Virgin Mobile phones, you get a great value – most contract phones are twice the price, with even less minutes included.
    Why anyone still has contract phones is a mystery to me – we’ve had VM or other pre-paid phones for going on 8 years now – no complaints, we decide what plan is best & change it as it suits us.
    Happy Calling !
    David B.