Virgin Mobile Shuttle

The Virgin Mobile Shuttle is a slider cell phone made by UTStarcom (now PCD) for Virgin Mobile and sold only at Best Buy. Professional reviews rate it "good" or "very good," with the $100 price and no service commitment being big factors. The Virgin Mobile Shuttle was criticized in early reviews because some of the promised high-speed 3G network features were unavailable when the reviews were published in fall 2008. For instance, the ability to stream video content from current music performances didn't launch until December 2008. Some observations remain valid, such as CNET pointing out that a basic WAP web browser is not an optimal choice for a phone with access to high-speed networks. A review at PCMag.com, which rates the Virgin Mobile Shuttle as "good" and then says little good about it, points out that compared with other Virgin Mobile phones, the Shuttle stands out, but on any other carrier, it would be "underwhelming."

The Virgin Mobile Shuttle has most of the features you'd expect on a 3G-enabled cell phone, although not all are of the highest quality, reviews say. It has what PCMag.com calls "very limited email and instant-messaging capabilities," and we found diverse opinions in reviews about the call quality. While CNET said the 1.3-megapixel camera "isn't too bad," PCMag.com trashes it, and we found praise and pans in owner reviews, too. No one says the MP3-only music player is spectacular, especially if you intend to play tunes through the speakerphone (you can hear it yourself in a Laptop Magazine video). CNET got a little more than promised when it tested battery talk time (250 minutes), and PCMag.com says it got up to a 4 GB memory card to work in the microSD slot. While the consensus is that the Virgin Mobile Shuttle is low-end compared with other 3G cell phones -- reviews don't even mention the Apple iPhone 3G in the same breath, for instance -- PCMag does point out that it's more full-featured than the really low-end cell phones offered by Virgin Mobile, such as the $30 Flare, which lacks even a camera.

We found the best reviews at CNET and PCMag.com, which usually top the rankings for cell phone reviews (Consumer Reports doesn't rate the Virgin Mobile Shuttle). Because the Virgin Mobile Shuttle is sold only at Best Buy, we found the largest stock of owner reviews at BestBuy.com, with a smattering at CNET and PhoneArena.com.