Customer Reviews

Virgin K10 Royale Pay As You Go Phone

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I've been using a Sony Ericsson T60 for a couple of years, which was an upgrade from my previous very OLD phone. I have a $29.99 plan with Cingular which is no longer being offered. In order to upgrade my phone, I'd have to switch to the new GSM phones and new network and thus get a new plan at a minimum of $39.99 which would really be over $50 a month if I DON'T go over the included "anytime" minutes. Right now my battery is so old it won't hold a charge and the cost of replacing the battery is prohibitive.

What to do?

Well the other day I finally signed up for Virgin mobile. I bought this phone from their website since they currently have a promotion that credits you $20 in air time if you buy and activate by a certain date - check virginmobileusa.com for details. So basically I got the phone for $30. They have another non-color version of this phone (actually two more - the Kyocera K7 and K9) that goes for $25. I was thinking about going the prepaid route for a while, but the 25 cents a minute for the first ten minutes of every day really put me off. I tend to use my phone almost daily, if not for marathon calls (thought I do like making use of my night and weekend minutes with Cingular). Currently, Virgin Mobile is offering a new plan in which you pay 35 cents a day for 10 cents a minute access at all times. $10.50 a month for 10 cents a minute. Not bad. Definitely the way to go if you use your cell phone for 100-200 minutes a month. With Cingular, I had 250 "anytime" minutes, and I would frequently go over that limit and end up paying 45 cents a minute. This happened more than I care to mention. In fact I just checked on my Cingular account via their website and I found that I spent approximately $1,200 on cellular service in the past year. $100 a month average? That's crazy. At least with Virgin Mobile you know EXACTLY how much money is in your account and your money/minutes doesn't expire (you just have to remember to "top up" with at least $20 every 90 days. So even if you almost never make any calls (because it's free to check your voice mail from a landline phone and also free to receive text messages), you'd spend what? $80 a year for cellular service. Definitely beats $1,200. However if you read the fine print on Virgin's website you will discover that Virgin Mobile will disconnect your service if they find that you are using it as a "message/voice mail" service only.

So back to the phone and my experience with Virgin Mobile so far: I ordered my phone late one night and received it two days later by FedEx (free). It came with a standard charger and I chose to buy the car charger. Activation was a snap, and less than 24 hours later, I had a $20 air time credit in my account. I immediately called my brother and he said that it was an improvement in clarity over my old phone. However I tend to get no "bars" in my home, though people can still hear me when I call. Elsewhere, I easily get 5 bars. This doesn't bother me really because with Cingular my signal was constantly dropped in the middle of a call and I had many irritated people always shouting "Hello!... Hello?!?!" while on the phone with me. Here's to hoping that there's no more of that...

The phone itself is okay. It lacks a proper internet browser from what I can tell. The Virgin Xtras thing is well... to each his or her own. The first day I got this phone I downloaded several superphonic song clip ringtones, wallpapers, and a voice mail greeting from the website. Even after paying $2.50 for each song and $1.00 - $2.00 for each graphic I had to pay AGAIN to download it from Virgin XL via my phone. And in the end I wasn't very impressed with the graphics or sound clips as they lacked color and clarity and I prefer to stick with the standard included graphics and ringtones although they are not extensive.

The keypad on this phone feels a little stiff and cheap compared to my old phone but the phone itself is a bit lighter. I haven't finished reading the manual yet so I'm hoping I can change some things that are important to me, like the alarm clock function. On my old phone, you could choose the ringtone for the alarm and it would sound repeatedly every 20 minutes for at least 20 full seconds. This phone just has a ten second "beep beep beep" that would NEVER wake me up. I really hope there's a way to tweak it. I hate having a separate bedside clock when such things shouldn't be necessary when one has a cell phone.

This phone has a somewhat small display and not nearly as many features as my old phone but I do have to say that the flashlight is a NICE feature and the voice activated dialing works very well.

I still haven't canceled my Cingular service as I'm in the middle of a billing cycle and I don't want to waste the opportunity to rack up the night and weekend minutes. I'm also trying to convince myself that prepaid is, in fact, the way to go. And face it, this is a good phone with decent features and if it gets lost, etc... So? You're not under contract with Virgin and you won't have to pay an outrageous fee to replace a "free with service contract" phone. Virgin will suspend your service if your phone gets lost or stolen and then apply whatever unused prepaid minutes you have in your account to any new Virgin Mobile phone you purchase (or are gifted).

All in all, I think this is a good phone and Virgin Mobile is offering a very good deal for those of us who want to have a cell phone for emergency and light-to-medium use but don't want to be shafted by contracts and added fees.

For anyone considering the purchase of this (or another) Virgin Mobile phone, do not be influenced by the identical negative reviews posted for several Virgin Mobile phones by someone calling himself "lookout guy." I cannot comment on the month to month plans, having only been a pay-as-you-go by-the-minute guy since I got my Virgin Mobile phone over two years ago. I can tell you that lookout guy is totally WRONG in terms of any "hidden fee" in terms of the by-the-minute service offered by Virgin Mobile. There is NO $1.50/day fee; if there was, no one would choose this option because it would end up costing more than a monthly plan. (Duh.) I can confirm that you only pay for the minutes you use. If you don't use your phone for days (even weeks) at a time, you pay nothing. The ONLY charge for having access to a Virgin Mobile phone on the by-the-minute plan is the minimum top-up charge (supposedly $20 every three months but after you become a customer you can get it down to $15 every three months if you choose auto top-up with a credit card). So if you NEVER use your phone, that's what it costs. Of course, you would simply end up accruing money in your account to be debited when you do finally use your phone. As long as you use your phone minimally (for emergencies and for very brief, occasional conversations only), you'll pay only $5-$6.66/month. I oughta know -- my balance keeps growing and growing because I rarely use my phone; if I were being charged a $1.50/day "access charge" I would know it.

Only you can decide if a pay-as-you-go plan such as this is suitable for you, but here's the quick math: if you know you will use your phone at least five minutes per day almost every day, then this plan isn't for you as it would cost you $37.50/month for only 150 minutes of use based on 25 cents/minute. If, like me, you are likely to have many days where you don't use the phone at all and other days where you use only a few minutes (with rare days that you use over 10 minutes), then this plan will be a bargain. (I used to be a Sprint PCS customer and ended up paying, on average, $1/minute for my calls because of my minimal phone use -- in other words, over four times as much as my Virgin Mobile minutes cost at their highest rate.)

The K10 Royale from Virgin Mobile USA has many excellent features, including voice recognition dialing, color liquid crystal display with backlighting, text messaging, LED flashlight, and "superphonic" ring tones made from real sound clips. Unfortunately, at the request of Virgin Mobile, Kyocera crippled the firmware so it is not possible to use the Kyocera Desktop software disc and data cable kit to back up one's contact list or install ring tones and wallpapers from one's personal computer. The absence of a data cable jack was one of the first things I noticed when I received the K10 in early August 2005. The phone comes with a standard beep ring tone and a selection of musical ring tones which you'll enjoy if rap and hip-hop are your style (they're not my style), and you can download more polyphonic (MIDI) and superphonic ringtones from Virgin Mobile over the air directly to the phone at $2.00 to $2.50 a pop. I've scoured the Web to see if ring tones are available from third parties, but I can't find any that support Virgin Mobile USA. I suspect that Virgin Mobile has restricted access, forcing one to buy files only from them.

A Kyocera customer support representative told me today that if contact list backup and ring tone download are essential, their similarly-featured generic K9 model should be chosen. I don't know if Virgin Mobile USA will accept registration of a phone not supplied by them, since it is obviously their intent to milk as much money as possible from customers by selling ring tones and wallpapers from their existing collection.

If you want an inexpensive cell phone with some nice features, and don't care about passing data back and forth between your personal computer and the phone, go ahead and buy it. If you think you'd like fully custom ring tones or are concerned about backing up a burgeoning contact list so you can easily transfer it to your next cell phone, look elsewhere.

People here are complaining about the VM service. This is for the cell phone not what network it is on!!!! This cell phone has awesome features and has never let me down. Now I am gona say one quick word on the network. You think it costs a lot and it has tons of hidden fees. I per month use about 100 minutes - 300 and I pay very little. On average I pay 10 dollars for the minute2minute plan. I have never had a dropped call and I always have full bar reception even in buildings. If you are saying this service costs alot look at boost mobile and verizon.

I've used a K7 phone for 3 years, and my wife has a K9. They are dependable and easy to use. Since the battery on my K7 won't hold a charge, I bought a K10. You can't do much better than the $20 price. However:

1. Unlike the K7 and K9, the K10 plays annoying tunes when it turns off and on. How embarrassing!

2. The K7 and K9 have shortcuts to silence the phone and lock the keypad. I use these shortcuts all the time. The K10 replaces those with shortcuts to VirginXL and for texting. If you text and use VirginXL, you can have my K10!

So my solution is to put the K10 battery in the K7, and put the K10 in the handy cell phone recycle envelope and mail it off. Unless you want it...but it won't be much good without a battery! At least I won't need to re-enter my contacts.

this cell phone is my first one that i have ever owned. almost everyone i know has a cell phone, so i had a good idea of what a good cell phone and a bad cell phone were. i thought the kyocera k10 was a good phone, so i decided to get it.

the service provider, virgin mobile, is fantastic. i will clear this up because many people are probably very confused about people talking about 25 cents or 10 cents a minute and stuff like that. virgin mobile offers "3 ways to pay," as they call it. the first way is minute to minute. you pay 25 cents per minute for the first ten minutes of talking you do on your phone that day. after those first ten minutes, you pay 10 cents per minute for every minute you talk for the rest of the day. this is a good option for people who use their phone maybe 3 to 5 times a week.

the second option is day to day. in this service, you always pay 10 cents per minute and you pay a daily charge of 35 cents per minute. i does not matter if you use your phone that day or not, you pay 35 cents. this is a better option for people who use their phone every day, but aren't exactly taking for hours.

the third option is month to month. this is the most complex option. you are alloted 300 minutes at the beginning of each month. this costs you $30 every month. now, let's say you go over your 300 minutes. in this case, virgin mobile will just charge you for every minute that you use after your initial 300 minutes. this is NOT the same as overage charges, because you are being charged 10 cents per minute, the standard rate in month to month. it adjusts to your use.

like almost every prepaid phone service provider, you must use a prepaid card UNLESS you use the month to month option, in which you are required to pay with a credit card. though it may seem like a hassle, using cards is quite simple. cards come in denominations of $20, $30, $50, and $90. you must add minutes using at least a $20 dollar card every 3 months. you must do this or you will lose all the minutes that are in your account. compared to rates of other phone companies, that's not so bad. there are 2 exceptions to the $20/3 months rule. if you use month to month, all the charges are automatically billed to your credit card. if you add a $90 card to your account, you receive what is called a service preserver. your service will remain active for one year, and you do not have to add cards to your account. this is NOT a contract, as i first thought it was. also, you still can add cards to your account if you would like to, but you do not have to with the service preserver.

now to the phone. i have to say this is a decent phone. yes it has a color screen, but it really isn't all that; you wouldn't be missing too much if you had a non-color screen phone. you can download games and ringtones, though they are a bit pricey (you are charged through the balance in your account). i gave this phone 3 stars for 2 reasons. one, the service is great. two, the phone makes and receives calls. that's what a phone is made for. that's what it does. i have yet to experience a dropped call, and voice quality is decent.

all in all, i think if you're on the bubble about buying this, go ahead and buy it. it's not terribly expensive, and there's no contracts. if you don't like it, you just stop the service. there's no contracts, so there's no fees for pulling out. at least you tried! remember, there's always the possiblility that you'll actually like it! :)

After using the Minute to Minute plan for just shy of 3 month, I still have $4.05 left of the $20.00 I put into my account on the first day. I don't use the phone much. It is perfect for me. For the first month, though, I could not access network services on my K10. VM's first level of telephone support was useless in solving the problem. I averaged 2-3 calls a week to the VM's support line with no results. During the first week, my case was escalated to an "investigation". I had several phone comversations with the escalation level staff with promises of results, but I got no results. Finally, in the 3rd phone coversation with an escalation guy (a different guy each time) at the end of the 4th week, this fellow did one thing and network access was possible on my phone. Now I was able to check how much money was left in my account without going to VM's web site! VM's phone support staff, as a group from my encounters, seem to be less than competant in troubleshooting cell phone technology!! Before getting the Kyocera K10, I had several other phones that came with much pricier plans. They were better designed phones, but VM's low service cost to me given my low phone usage more than offsets the shortcomings of this K10 phone. ws ps: I bought this phone directly from VM online, not through Amazon or a local vendor. Next time, I might buy the phone through a local vendor (Radio Shack). ws

I had the K7 "Rave" for two years, toward the end there it got buggy on me. I've had a K10 now for about six months, and it's already farking up. Features will randomly freeze, requiring me to take out the battery and power on again to recover from. Sometimes, certain features work, sometimes not.
Volume is lousy, you'll be that guy shouting everywhere you go.
Display is "okay" as in not too dim, but not to easy to read either.
I currently have my call alert set to vibrate/ring... sometimes it rings, other times it vibrates, totally randomly. Is that right?

Don't even bother trying to browse the web, it's s oo
s l o w .

Virgin Mobile is of average helpfulness. Although my phone's still under warranty, they would charge me to replace it *unless* they found a manufacturing defect. The rep wasn't sure if software counted as a manufacturing defect.
Lousy.

I DO NOT recommend Kyocera phones.
I'm currently looking for a different service provider.

Meh.

I switched to Virgin from T Mobile prepaid and took their 34.99 plan because the 1000 minutes nights and weekends seemed attractive. I've only been with them a few days, so the jury is out as to their customer service and "hidden fees" that many complain about. Time will tell. Now, on to the phone itself.

It is a very light, basic phone, but I find the display eaiser to read than the one on my Nokia 6010 from T Mobile, and the features are more intuitive and eaiser to use. When I'm receiving calls, the sound quality is great, much better than on the T Mobile phone (T Mobile is GSM, Virgin is CDMA, perhaps this makes a difference?). However, people I call all say that though they can hear me loud and clear, the sound is crappy compared to the Nokia. This is, so far, the only downside to this phone. Battery life seems good (3 days on standby and still indicating a full charge), and the layout of the controls is very good. I only wish a hands-free headset was included. But at $19.95, I really can't complain.

This is a basic, inexpensive phone that does everything it is supposed to do very well, except perhaps for it's sound quality to the people you call. As for Virgin Mobile, I'll be back in a month with another review of this phone based on my experience with them.

I've used Motorola phones for several years with no complaints. When I decided to try pre-paid (as I don't use a lot of minutes each month) I went with Virgin Mobile. Their selection of phones is limited but I found the Kyocera Slider to be the most attractive. Twice they sent me the phone and both were defective; unable to accept the program. I then learned from the "live advisor" that they have had several other problems with that model and placed them on clearance. I had to go to battle with Virgin Mobile before they refunded me what I paid for the phone.

Not wanting to wait again for a phone to be sent to me, I went out and bought the Kyocera K10. Unlike with my previous services through Nextel and Centennial, I had no "bars" from inside my home. In other areas, however, the reception was decent.

The most inconvenient feature of this phone is the dimly lit screen. Unlike what they advertised, the screen colors are not vibrant. There is a very limited graphic selection loaded, and the ringtones are canned. The menu setup is such that I frequently accidentally pushed buttons while carrying the phone that would connect to Virgin Mobile's online account access. You get one freebie daily, and get charged thereafter.

Keep an eye out for unknown charges on your account. I know people that have had good experiences with Virgin Mobile. Mine was not one of them.