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Virgin Mobile takes top prepaid honors in J.D. Powers survey
They may not be offering the Lobster 700, but Virgin Mobile's US outpost can lay claim to one thing: they've bested all of their peers in J.D. Powers' latest survey of prepaid services through national carriers and MVNOs. The survey of 4,000 current customers measured satisfaction with call quality, company image, account management, initial activation, service plan options, and customer service, with Virgin scoring 751 on a 1,000-point scale. Coming in a close second was Verizon with their Inpulse service, scoring 736, followed by T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, and TracFone, while Cingular's GoFone and Alltel both scored under the average of 717. Perhaps more interesting than the rankings, though, was the finding that customers of MVNOs (like Virgin) ranked their services higher in account management and cost, while direct services (like T-Mobile) fared better in areas like company image and call quality. Anyway, our congratulations go out to Virgin on that shiny new trophy for the mantel, but honestly, we'd gladly trade it for a Lobster any day of the week.[Via The Wireless Report]
UK gets countdown clocks to Wii launch
Originally posted in the Wii Chat forums, there was supposedly a memo sent out where it was revealed that select UK Virgin megastores would be receiving countdown clocks, set to count down to the launch of the Wii. The memo says that Nintendo would be contacting the following stores from today onward about when to expect their clock's arrival: Megastore Piccadilly Liverpool Cribbs Causeway Kings Road Bournemouth Leeds Meadowhall Birmingham Over at Joystiq, Ross brings up a good point. With Nintendo's keynote at this month's Leipzig Games Convention, it's a natural venue for them to announce the date, which would see these stores having their clocks installed and functional on that date of August 23rd. While we'll chalk this one up to rumor at the moment, consider it an unusually interesting one.[Note: The graphic does not convey a believed release date. It is entirely made up on our part.][Via Joystiq]
Virgin tries text Q&A for in-flight spunk
If you're in the 99+ percent of folks on non-WiFi-enabled flights, and are well aware that cellphone use while in-air is probably coming later rather than sooner, Virgin Atlantic is hoping to grab your attention. As airlines helplessly grasp at off-the-wall gimmicks to acquire more non-ticket sales and provide a more luxurious and exciting experience to the customer, Virgin seems to think it has a hit on its hands. The London-based company has stated its plans to introduce the "world's first in-flight texting service," that has nothing at all to do with SMS; rather, passengers will be able to text any fathomable question from their seat-back television screen to an existing "land-based text answer service" that supposedly will answer any queries "within minutes" -- not a bad feature to have if trying to brush on a language before arriving in a foreign country or scouting out the nearest Engadget reader meetup. The company has suggested interrogations could arise about popular entertainment in cities, how to survive jetlag, or cabin conversation starters. While there may be more thrilling ways to get to your destination, sometimes a good 'ole fashion plane ride is inevitable, but at least Virgin's Q&A game can help you ignore your boredom (or the awful in-flight movie) when flying the friendly skies.
HTC Trilogy christened "Lobster 700" for Virgin Mobile
No, not our Virgin Mobile, folks. The UK's Virgin Mobile will be getting HTC's Trilogy, which we knew; now, the retail model's officially been named the "Lobster 700," a moniker that seems strangely appropriate (though we can't really put our finger on why). As you may recall, the Trilogy is essentially a Faraday with the welcome addition of DAB, though at the expense of a rather prominent hump on the phone's right side. Now that the phone's case has been mercifully recolored, it appears that release is imminent, with some shops reporting availability next month. No word on eventual US availability, though we might be putting the proverbial cart before the horse -- let's get us some live DAB networks first, shall we?
Virgin Mobile keeps it simple with Kyocera "Oystr"
Want Virgin Mobile service? Got 30 bucks? Kyocera's got you covered. The 3.5oz back-to-basics Oystr -- no "e" -- offers a color internal display, speakerphone, "Superphonic" ringtones, and that's about it. Some of us might be quickly overcome with a bad case of feature starvation, but at least the pearl white clamshell (hence the name) doesn't look half bad -- and for an honest $30 with no contract, we'll forego the typical grousing about the lack of external display.[Thanks, Roy]
Virgin's Digital Starter Pack: The DAP for noobs
We know that not everyone shares our need to obsess over every MP3 player to hit the shelves, but anyone who has ever set foot in an electronics store can probably recognize Virgin's Digital Starter Pack as a novelty. Features on the included 256MB player look sparse, consisting of a tiny screen with color-changing backlight, a voice recorder, and the seemingly useless ability to mess with the playback speed of your music. The £30 ($52) package also comes with a booklet explaining how to get started and a coupon code for five "free" song downloads from Virgin's own online music store, but unless you're insistent upon donating to Sir Richard Branson's hot air balloon fund, you'd probably be much better off dropping the same amount of dough on Napster's 1GB player . It might not have a backlight that changes color, but it will hold a lot more than 60 songs and won't get you laughed at by the gadget snobs.[Via Shiny Shiny]
SugarMama: earn Virgin Mobile minutes by watching ads
Yeah, we've seen this system before. It didn't work for Gizmondo's Tiger Telematics when it was called Smart Adds, we didn't think it was going to work for the company's unofficial spinoff, Xero Mobile (started by the CEO of Tiger's Smart Adds division), but now Richy Branson wants you to to stop paying for (some of) your minutes by watching youth-oriented ads. Welcome to SugarMama, Virgin Mobile's ads-for-minutes system which gives you airtime in exchange for viewing a video ad or interacting with text ad, and then providing feedback to the advertisers (presumably to make sure you actually performed the act of watching or reading said ad). We don't yet know exactly how many ads it'll take to reach the monthly ceiling of 75 minutes "earned," but what would really impress us is if you could earn your whole minute plan this way.
Virgin Mobile launches Switch_Back QWERTY phone
It might not be any more good looking now that it's finally being released to public consumption, but Virgin Mobile's new Switch_Back handset by Kyocera still seems to be a solid choice for QWERTY-inclined text messaging fiends. Along with the "hidden" QWERTY keypad (it's called a clamshell, guys), the phone sports internal and external displays, and has a VGA camera. Otherwise there isn't much going on here. The handset will go for $150, and should be available in stores nationwide.
Virgin Mobile poised to launch MVNO in China
Interfax China is reporting that Virgin Mobile is close to signing a partnership with wireless carrier China Unicom that would make the UK-based company the first foreign MVNO in post-WTO China. Although Virgin would still require approval from the Chinese government, which carefully scrutinizes all proposed foreign business presences, the company will benefit from past deals in which Spain's Telefonica and Germany's Vodafone have made invesments in domestic telecom firms. Virgin already has offices in Shanghai, and CEO Richard Branson recently told reporters to expect a Chinese launch this fall, so it would seem pretty likely that this venture, which is well over a year in the making, has the necessary government support to proceed.
