Virgin Mobile - Arc cell phone by UTStarcom Cell Phone Review

I don't use my cell phone often.  It's just for emergencies or "honey can you stop and get milk on your way home from work" kinds of calls, so I have a prepaid plan from Virgin Mobile.  So I pretty much just need a basic phone.

However I started working about 30 miles from home which involves a one hour commute each way so I figured it was time I joined the 21st century and got a phone with Bluetooth.  The ride home is treacherous and has me driving thru some really bad areas at times so I wanted to be able to just cram the Bluetooth thingie in my ear and concentrate on driving but still be able to talk.

Fortunately Virgin Mobile introduced a bunch of new phones right when I started shopping so I lucked out and ended up with the Virgin Mobile Arc by UT Starcom and I could not be more pleased with it.

The Arc is an attractive jewel tone red color.  It is a flip phone but it is quite small at only 3.8 x .8 x .7 inches and weighs in at only 3 ounces.  It comes with the battery, a wall outlet charger and an instruction booklet but I didn't even need the booklet as it's very intuitive to set up and use.

Some of the Arc's features are as follows:

• Camera Phone
• Bluetooth® Wireless Technology
• Full Color Internal & External Screens
• Text Messaging
• Mobile Web
• Speakerphone
• Voice Dialing
• Battery life includes talk time of 210 minutes and standby time of 14.5 days

The Arc's full color screens are very clear and easy to read and the buttons are nice as well.  They are not rubbery and may be a bit small for large fingers but they work OK for me.  This phone rings nice and loud as well which is nice.  My old phone the ringer was not quite loud enough so sometimes I missed calls when I could not hear the ring from inside my purse.  Another cool thing is that I can download real music ringtones from Virgin Mobile's website and there are gazillions to choose from so I can almost always find my current favorite song or some other odd thing like the theme to The Phantom of the Opera or a specific movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Although the Arc does not come with a Bluetooth headset I was able to buy a fairly inexpensive one from Radio Shack that works just fine with it.  This is the first phone I've had with Bluetooth.  It takes a minute or two to establish connectivity between the phone and headset before I start driving which is a bit of a pain but I'm guessing that that is the case with all phones and it's a small price to pay for the safety factor and convenience of being hands free.

I bought this phone for the size and Bluetooth capability and have never been interested in having a camera on my phone.  That said the Arc takes surprisingly good pictures!  I know this because i was leaving work last week they were bringing a Grand Prix car into the building to put on display so I snapped a picture of it to show my husband.  We were bothtruly amazed that it came out clear and crisp.

All the above features are great but what I like best besides the Bluetooth and the tiny size is that this phone holds its charge for a very long time.  Previous phones stayed charged for 5 days or so (less if I actually talked on it) and I had to recharge twice a week. But the Arc only needs to be charged maybe every 10 days or so which I just love because I'm honestly not good about charging my phone regularly and I don't have a car charger so the long standby time is much appreciated.

This phone has other features like mobile web and text messaging but I'm over 35 and don't care about stuff like that so I have no idea how well they work.  I just want to take and make calls, use the speaker phone and the Bluetooth, and download a new ringtone once in a while.

The Verdict - I'm so happy that I bought this phone.  It looks good, has all the features I need, it never drops my calls, and it holds a charge for a long time. And it was under $50.  5 stars