LG Optimus Elite (Virgin Mobile)

Though undeniably low-end on other carriers (like Sprint), the $149.99 LG Optimus Elite falls right into the middle of Virgin Mobile's smartphone lineup. For just $20 more than the LG Optimus V?($129.99, 4 stars), the Elite gets you a larger display, a faster processor, and a better camera.?It's no great shakes compared with many other new Android phones on the market, but the LG Optimus Elite is a fine way to get connected with an affordable service plan from Virgin.

Design and Call Quality
The Optimus Elite measures 4.6 by 2.5 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.3 ounces. It's a comfortable size to hold and handle, especially if you aren't a fan of king-sized phones. The all-plastic construction feels a bit chintzy, but the black, textured back panel and silver plastic surrounding the glass face look fairly innocuous. The 3.5-inch, 480-by-320 pixel capacitive touch screen is?fine, but the lower resolution can make for some jagged text. There are four haptic feedback-enabled touch keys beneath the display, and typing felt fine on the phone's on-screen keyboard.

The Elite is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. Reception is average (Virgin uses Sprint's network), and so is call quality. In our tests, voices sounded extremely thin and a little fuzzy in the phone's earpiece, but still loud and intelligible. Calls made with the phone sound a bit distant, but relatively clear, with good noise cancellation. Calls were fine through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars), and voice dialing worked over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone also sounds fine but doesn't go loud enough for outdoor use. Battery life was average at 5 hours, 56 minutes of talk time.

An eco-friendly device, the Elite earns PCMag's GreenTech Approval. The handset's casing is made of 50 percent recycled plastic, and is RoHS compliant, which means it is free from many potentially hazardous materials such as halogens, mercury, phthalates, and PVC. The phone is ULE Platinum Certified, and?comes with a charger that exceeds the EC Code of Conduct on energy efficiency when it comes to no-load consumption. Unlike many other chargers, the Optimus Elite's charger only consumes 0.03 watts of power when plugged into a wall socket without being connected to the phone. Also, the Elite comes in fully recyclable packaging that uses soy inks, and contains up to 30 percent post-consumer paper.

Data Plans and Apps
The best reason to get a phone on Virgin is to tap into the carrier's inexpensive pricing plans. You can get unlimited text, data, and Web for just $35 per month with 300 voice minutes. 1200 minutes costs $45, and unlimited voice calling brings the price to $55 per month. If you don't do much talking, that $35 plan is hard to beat?especially considering that a data plan alone will cost you $30 on a carrier like Verizon Wireless, and for that price you're limited to 2GB of data per month. Virgin does have a couple of downsides for heavy data users: There's no tethering or hotspot mode, so you can't use a laptop with this connection. Additionally, after 2.5GB of full-speed data usage per month, your speeds will be throttled significantly until the end of your billing cycle.

The Elite runs Android 2.3.7 (Gingerbread). There's no word yet on whether it will receive an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). The UI is practically stock Android, though LG has added Mobile ID, which allows you to customize your phone with downloadable theme packs from Virgin that include applications, ringtones, wallpapers, and widgets. There are five customizable home screens you can swipe between, which come preloaded with just a few apps and directions for how to use the phone. There's precious little bloatware, which is a plus.

The Elite is powered by a dated 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7627A processor. While that's a nice little boost from the 600MHz part powering the Optimus V and the HTC Wildfire S?($144.99), it still places the Optimus Elite on the lower end of new Android phones. It feels responsive enough to get you through all the basic tasks, but it isn't ideal for high-end gaming. On the plus side, this is the first phone on Virgin with NFC support, which allows you to use your phone to make mobile payments using apps like Google Wallet.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
You get 1.93GB of internal memory. There's also an empty microSD card slot underneath the battery cover, in which my 32GB and 64GB SanDisk microSD cards worked fine. The Elite did a nice job handling a wide variety of media. The phone played AAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, and WMA audio files, but not FLAC. Music sounded good through both wired earbuds as well as Altec Lansing Backbeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99, 3.5 stars). I was also able to play all of our test videos files at resolutions up to 800-by-480, except for DivX.

The 5-megapixel auto-focus camera comes with an LED flash. Shutter speeds were fast, at 0.3 second, but photos are just average. Pictures look fine for sharing online, with decent color and detail, but this isn't a replacement for a good digital camera. The Optimus also records 720-by-480 videos at a smooth, steady 30 frames per second both indoors and out.

If you aren't concerned with top-of-the-line specs, the LG Optimus Elite is a great deal when you pair it with an inexpensive plan on Virgin. The modest upgrades to its display, processor, and camera make it a better buy than the LG Optimus V ?or the HTC Wildfire S. It's very comparable to the LG Optimus Slider?($179.99, 3.5 stars), though that phone adds a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard, at the expense of a smaller 3.2-inch display and a 3.2-megapixel camera. The Motorola Triumph?($279.99, 4 stars) remains Virgin's top-notch Android phone, with a 1GHz processor, sharp 4.1-inch display, and 5-megapixel camera that shoots 720p videos.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 5 hours 56 minutes

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