Today, Amazon.com is offering the Virgin Mobile version of the Novatel MiFi 2200 portable hotspot for $49.99. Shipping is free.

At $100 off the standard retail price, it is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the MiFi on Virgin Mobile.

The only downside of the the Amazon offer is that the Wal-mart version of the device offers a $20/month, 1GB data plan, which is not available on MiFi’s sold from other retail outlets. The non-Walmart versions of the device offer a $20/month, 500MB plan instead, in addition to the $50/month unlimited (albeit, throttled after 2.5GB) plan.

With Virgin Mobile now offering a $10, 100MB data plan, the $50 price point is very attractive as an emergency backup connection solution. It is the lowest price for a Sprint 3G or Sprint MVNO mobile broadband card on prepaid service that we have seen offered from a direct retailer.

The Virgin Mobile MiFi operates on Sprint’s CDMA EV-DO Rev A, 3G network.

Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 Prepaid Mobile Hotspot (Virgin Mobile)

Update: Price is fluctuating. See comments below for updates.

Today only, Virgin Mobile is offering half off the Motorola Triumph and LG Optimus Slider. These two devices are currently Virgin Mobile’s flagship Android smartphones.

In addition, Virgin Mobile left the coupon code SAVE20 active, for an additional 20% off the sale price. When combined, you get 60% off the suggested retail price for the devices.

When combined, you can purchase a Motorola Triumph and LG Optimus Slider for $219, which is around the same price as the Optimus Slider alone at retail.

Currently the LG Optimus Slider is running Android 2.3, Gingerbread, while the Motorola Triumph is running Android 2.2. However, the Triumph features a larger screen, faster performance, and HDMI output.

Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile is playing to win in prepaid, but they’re burning their most savvy customers in a major way… and people are taking notice.

Putting it bluntly, Virgin Mobile is shortchanging their customers on firmware updates, compared to other carriers, and even Sprint’s own postpay brand. It’s not acceptable, it’s wrong, and it needs to be fixed. Read more for the examples, reasoning, and tough love.

It’s been a long time since we were the ones pushing for Firmware Over the Air. We’d like to think we changed the industry, just a little bit, by pushing carriers and manufacturers to embrace the practice. It finally came full circle a few weeks ago with the release of iOS 5, making Apple the last manufacturer to implement it.

Apple actually was doing okay with their iTunes-style over-the-wire updating, but the rest of the industry hasn’t done so well. Virgin Mobile is sadly, the latest culprit in mismanaging the maintenance of their devices.

When the LG Optimus V came out, it was not alone. In the Optimus One family of devices, LG touted that the whole family of devices would get Android 2.3, Gingerbread. And, they made good on that, the Optimus S on Sprint has been updated, for example. Same hardware across all these phones, so equal treatment by carriers, right? Wrong.

Virgin Mobile has informed PhoneNews.com that there are no plans to update the Optimus V to Gingerbread. It’s simply unethical. Forcing people to pick up a newer phone, just to get Gingerbread… especially when LG is happy to offer up the upgrade to the carrier!

From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense, albeit evil sense. If you deny the tech-savvy Gingerbread, they’ll go out and buy a new handset, and sell the old one on eBay. Thus, through price discrimination, you create a new market of super-cheap, used Android phones. Most people don’t care about firmware versions, so the eBay market will be saturated with super-cheap Optimus V’s that go for $50 to $75. More (new) customers for Virgin Mobile.

It doesn’t help things that the Optimus V is practically unusable at this point. The phone’s limited internal storage is gobbled up by a swath of almost-mandatory Google Apps updates. When you’re finished updating Google Maps, Google Search, Google Voice Search, Gmail, and YouTube… you’ve used up most of the phone’s internal storage. This is more of an architectural problem in Android (which will be fixed in Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich), but updating the Optimus V to Gingerbread would make these updates more optional, and alleviate the problem.

Oh, wait, one more insult on the Optimus V. There are two firmware versions out there, and you can’t upgrade. LG issued initial units with firmware V4. Later they issued version V7 to correct problems with the radio (and disable mobile hotspot… left in the phone by mistake). Unfortunately, you can’t update to V7. Not only is it not offered over-the-air, but when you run LG Software Update… the update fails, every single time.

We’ve brought these issues to the attention of Virgin Mobile. They haven’t changed. We don’t want to see history repeat itself. So, we’re now standing on our somewhat high-class soap box, and we have a message…

… Virgin Mobile, get your act together on firmware, or hire us to manage it for you.

Ahead of the release of the HTC Wildfire and LG Optimus Slider later this month, Virgin Mobile has decided to delay the introduction of data throttling on Beyond Talk plans from its previous rollout date of today to sometime in 2012, citing the need for the extra time to properly implement the systems necessary in order for the network management policy to work as expected.

“We have decided to delay the reduction of data speeds until 2012 to ensure we have all the necessary systems in place so that our customer experience will remain positive. We will provide further information on timing beforehand so our customers have advance notification.”

Virgin Mobile first announced plans to throttle customers on Beyond Talk plans in July ahead of the release of the highly anticipated Motorola Triumph high-end Android smartphone. At the time, the policy was meant to roll out today as a measure to restore stability to its service, which has been impacted by the popularity of the unlimited data access offered by the Beyond Talk plan. Now with the delay to 2012, customers have a few more months to use the only truly unlimited data plan on prepaid to its fullest.

Virgin Mobile has officially announced pricing and launch details for two new Android smartphones in the previously revealed LG Optimus Slider and the HTC Wildfire S.

The LG Optimus Slider is Virgin Mobile’s version of the LG Gelato Q which will be released next month on October 16th online for $199.99, in Sprint stores on October 30th, Best Buy and RadioShack on October 31st and Target on November 6th. The phone features a 3.2 inch touchscreen with a sliding QWERTY keyboard, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system, MicroSD slot, 3.2 megapixel camera and Bluetooth 3.0 along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The HTC Wildfire S will be available at Best Buy and Radio Shack for $199.99 on October 23rd as a retailer exclusive, with Best Buy getting the Silver color and Radio Shack the White version. The phone features a 3.2 inch touch display running Android Gingerbread, HTC Sense, Wi-Fi radio, 5.0 megapixel camera with flash and video recorder, Bluetooth 3.0, 512 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM, microSD slot, 600MHz processor and 3.5 mm headphone jack.

Virgin Mobile is currently offering a 25% discount on its entire smartphone lineup through its online portal, with the Motorola Triumph at $225, LG Optimus V at $112, BlackBerry Curve 8530 at $135 and Samsung Intercept at $97.50, all before tax and shipping. The coupon code BRB25 should be entered before completing the purchase. The Intercept offer also includes a $20 service credit once purchased and activated on a Beyond Talk plan.

Best Buy has listed and revealed the first press images of the forthcoming LG Optimus Slider for Virgin Mobile for $199.99. The Virgin Mobile Slider is the virtual operator’s version of the forthcoming LG Gelato Q expected to launch next month on Sprint under different branding.

The phone is nearly identical to the popular LG Optimus V Android smartphone with the addition of a sliding QWERTY keyboard and a stock version of Android Gingerbread with a 3.2 inch touch display and 3.0 megapixel camera. Further specific details have yet to be revealed and Virgin Mobile has confirmed that there are no plans to update the original Optimus V model to Gingerbread despite the Sprint model receiving its own update within the past few weeks. Continue reading for another shot of the phone with the slider open.

Walmart has an exclusive double-data offering on the Virgin Mobile MiFi. MiFi units sold from Walmart.com and Walmart retail stores have a different serial number range, which grants them 1 GB of data for $20/month, in addition to the $50/month unlimited plan. That’s double the data (500 MB) that Virgin Mobile offers on the standard plan.

OfficeMax this week is selling the Virgin Mobile MiFi for $99, down from the suggested retail of $129.

To get the best of both worlds, print out the product page from OfficeMax, and take it to Walmart. Price match down Walmart’s MiFi to $99. Finally, enjoy the 1 GB $20/month data, instead of only having 500 MB.

For more details about the current MiFi offering, and how Walmart fits into it, read more after the break.

The MiFi 2200 is Virgin Mobile’s first MiFi device. As a Wi-Fi hotspot, it supplies EV-DO Rev A. Virgin Mobile recently however began to throttle all mobile broadband plans on unlimited usage, to 2.5 GB per month of full 3G speeds. After that, speeds are throttled to 250kbps, which Virgin Mobile claims is still 3G speed. However, the throttled speed rivals EDGE, a network commonly considered to be sub-3G.

Hence, the 1 GB plan exclusive to Walmart may be the sweet spot. At $20, it’s less than half the unlimited plan, but completely unthrottled. At $40/month for two reloads, you get 2 GB of unthrottled data, which is where it starts to become economical to switch to the unlimited plan.

Virgin Mobile service can be cancelled at any time, but it is not clear how long the 1 GB Walmart plan will remain. The 1 GB plan pre-dates the 500 MB offering on the standard $20 tier, as such, you may want to hold onto the 1 GB plan and not either cancel or go to unlimited. It is quite possible that the 1 GB plan could disappear without notice.

Both Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile have thus far grandfathered prepaid customers into their existing monthly plan tiers, for example, customers on the $25 Beyond Talk plan have not been forced to upgrade to the $35 tier, despite the $25 tier no longer being offered.

The 1 GB plan at Walmart remains an oddball, as Walmart has never touted the plan in any external marketing, and in many stores it’s not even clear that Walmart has an exclusive or enhanced MiFi offering. Virgin Mobile has not documented the plan anywhere online, except during signup, and in the My Account functions of customers who have selected the plan during activation.

The most powerful prepaid smartphone in America gets a full review. At twice the price of the LG Optimus V, is it worth the cost of admission? Read more to find out.

It’s pretty amazing that in the past three years how much the wireless landscape has really changed. When iPhone came out, it was $599, and people actually bought and used it as a prepaid phone at the same price that the postpay users bought into. Fast forward to today, and iPhone is now banned from prepaid, and its price has fallen to a maximum of $299.

Seeing a phone for the same price, that can rival iPhone feature-for-feature, and not have a contract attached to it, is what the Motorola Triumph was built to do.

When we unboxed this phone for the first time, we were generally impressed with its build quality. This does not appear to be a non-Motorola manufactured device. We already knew that it was ODM’ed by Huawei, as one of Motorola’s first Android ODM endeavors.

Motorola has been trying to make outsourcing manufacturing work for them for years now, and we can think of all the failures along the way. Name one Motorola C-series phone that you actually enjoyed. No, we couldn’t either.

As such, there was quite a bit of apprehension about what would happen when we first powered on the apparently-outsourced Droid-alike Triumph. Would it handle more like a Droid, or more like Motorola’s history of ODM failures…

Thankfully, it handles more like a Droid, a lot more.

Unlike the LG Optimus V, we were able to install our usual payload of apps without running out of in-phone storage. We had a similar woe on the other Virgin Mobile Android phone, the Samsung Intercept. The phone has an ample 2 GB of internal storage, so thankfully, storing apps that do not support App2SD are not an issue on this device.

Quickly, we realize where this device slotted into the Android ecosystem; a true cost-effective alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S. While it is a bit slower, it has a few more modern features like built-in HDMI output, and also does not get bogged down by a poor firmware implementation.

Unfortunately, this phone does not appear to be built off of any specific Droid firmware branch from our pokings-around. We suspect this is due to its ODM heritage.

While Virgin Mobile and PhoneNews.com probably will never see eye-to-eye on their anti-rooting policy (Virgin claims it is a violation of their terms of service, something we don’t see legally binding), the phone is indeed easy to root. One-click rooting exploits from other phones have already been ported over.

Unlike LG’s blunder, there is no easy one-touch option to enable Mobile Hotspot on the device… it is fully locked-down, unlike the Optimus V. So, while Optimus V gets to hotspot without the gray area, you’ll have to root the device to enjoy the same functionality on the Triumph.

Also equally mildly disappointing (and equally not unexpected), the battery life. It gets through the day, but power users will want to keep a portable charger around. The surprising bit for us is that the battery is indeed Motorola-manufacturered, and yet performs like what we would expect from an ODM product.

Thankfully, we do expect this phone to get some traction in the hacking community, it’s cheap enough to be useful for the elite phone community, and when combined with Google Voice, it can be used without changing your phone number. Considering the $35/month voice plan has only 300 minutes, this is actually an attractive option for falling back to other prepaid, voice only phones should you run out of minutes in a month.

And yes, Google Voice works well with this phone. In fact, you can finally make free VoIP calls using the many Google Voice SIP bridges that have emerged. The CPU is powerful enough, and battery long lasting enough, that we were able to carry out Google Voice phone calls without problem. It’s also a low-bandwidth task, so the 2.5 GB throttling threshold should not affect that (however, we were not able to test that scenario, yet…).

We’ll have camera photos up in a follow-up article, but what impressed us the most was the built-in LED flash. Finally, a good prepaid phone with a flash. And, it also works with Motorola’s on-Market Droid LED flashlight tool, so you can use it as a flashlight all the time as well.

In the end, we were left throughly impressed with the Motorola Triumph. The only features we found lacking were the lack of an extended battery accessory, and a poor performance by the front-facing camera. We really don’t see the front-facing camera as anything more than a novelty on this device, unfortunately… it was too grainy even in excellent lighting conditions.

However, all of that aside, this is now our prepaid phone of choice. While $299 in this economy is an extreme expense for many, this will now give you the capability to do just about anything an iPhone can do, and without selling your soul for a two-year contract.

It’s a great phone, and despite Virgin Mobile’s recent drawbacks on quality (and pricing) of service, it still makes for the best bang-for-your-buck solution out there.

Updated to correct a reference where we did not refer to the phone properly as the most powerful prepaid smartphone in America today.

Virgin Mobile has announced and confirmed the forthcoming PayLo plan changes first confirmed on PhoneNews.com. In addition, the brand has announced an expansion to Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile locations.

As previously reported, Virgin Mobile’s new PayLo plan will be getting allowance increases to 1500 minutes and 1500 minutes with an extra 20MB of data access for $30 a month.