Virgin Mobile Shuttle review (red)

Of course, the much-touted feature of the Shuttle is its EV-DO support. Indeed, we found surfing the Web quite fast on the Shuttle's browser. However, because the Shuttle uses a simple WAP browser without a lot of graphics or video, we didn't think the EV-DO added too much to the experience. Once Virgin Mobile starts supporting streaming video or streaming music content in its broadband offerings, we can see this being more useful. For now, it just makes loading pages faster.

Probably the feature with the most promise is the support for location-based services like Buddy Beacon and Where. Buddy Beacon is a friend-finder service previously associated with Helio handsets, while Where is a location service that partners up with sites like Yelp and GasBuddy to find the nearest restaurant or gas station. Other partners include Eventful for nearby events, Accuweather for the local weather, and Topix for local news. Where also has a built-in local search service plus maps and directions.

We weren't able to test the Buddy Beacon service, but we did try out the Where application. At the time of testing, these location-based applications were not able for download from the Virgin store, and could only be accessed via the Web browser. This might explain why the application thought we were about eight blocks away from our actual location, and we had to enter our location in manually. Once we did that though, we found the results of the search and the restaurants nearby quite accurate. Clearly, the location-based functionality isn't ironed out yet, and we hope to revisit this once native applications are available for the Shuttle.

The Virgin Mobile Shuttle comes with decent music player, with all the features we've come to expect from music phones. You get to create and edit playlists, plus there are repeat and shuffle modes. The player interface is plain, with an album art prominently displayed and player controls underneath. Since there's a microSD card slot, you're not limited to the Shuttle's internal memory of 64MB.

The Shuttle takes decent but not great pictures.

The 1.3-megapixel camera on the Shuttle isn't too bad. It can take pictures in six different resolutions (1280x960, 1024x768, 640x480, 320x240, 176x144, and 160x120), three quality settings, and with three shutter sounds (with no silent option). Other settings include white balance, color effects, fun frames, and a self-timer. Photo quality turned out to be decent but not great. Pictures appeared washed out and on the blurry side, though still better than a VGA camera. The Shuttle also has a built-in camcorder and can record in three quality settings with white balance, color effects, and a self-timer as options. You can also set a "cue sound" and mute the audio.

You can personalize the shuttle with a variety of wallpapers, graphics, and sounds. The Shuttle also comes with three games: Midnight Pool 2, a demo version of Tetris, and a Glu Combo Pack. If you're not satisfied with any of these, you can download more options from the VirginXL store.

Performance
We tested the Virgin Mobile Shuttle in San Francisco using Virgin Mobile's service. Call quality was admirable. Callers said our voice sounded natural without a lot of hiss, and is quite close to landline quality. Similarly, we heard them loud and clear without a lot of static. As for speakerphone quality, callers reported a tiny bit more echo on their end, while we thought the internal speakers sounded quite tinny and hollow. As for audio quality, we certainly wouldn't recommend the internal speakers for listening to music since the speakers do not offer the best sound. We would suggest using a stereo Bluetooth headset instead.

As we mentioned, the EV-DO speed was certainly noticeable. Loading pages took mere seconds, and downloading a game took around 30 seconds.

The Virgin Mobile Shuttle has a rated battery life of 3.91 hours talk time and 2 weeks of standby time. According to our tests, the Shuttle has a talk time of 4 hours and 10 minutes. According to the FCC radiation tests, the SAR rating is 1.26 watts per kilogram.