Samsung Intercept M910 - Steel gray (Virgin Mobile) Smartphone

Design : This phone is a little bit bulky because it is almost 0.65 inch thick. Micro SD card, Mini USB, volume button, camera button at front, and slight out full physical QWERTY key board to the left are convenient and good design. 4 rows slide-out full QWERTY key board is pretty solid.

Calling : When this phone receive a call, it says by voice who is calling & number; his or her numbers. Voice from speaker is pretty clear. Call can be reject with message like whichever messages a person want to type it. A few of the excuse messages are already typed.

Messaging : Text, Email and SMS functions are pretty good. When phone is on messaging screen, it shows the person to all available messaging functions. This is very good and it can be attach Pictures, Videos, Audios, Slideshows, Capture pictures & videos, and Record audios.

Email : For the Yahoo! Email &; Instant messaging and AOL Email & AIM, Android apps are better. Google Mail & Chat are already installed and these are pretty good, but Google talk is only for chat and does not have Sign Out function like it can sign out totally (not like sign out from Google talk or chat screen). It does not have verbally talk function either. I wish it would have been like talk verbally thru Google talk by mobile phone. It can also get the cooperated or job email.

YouTube : YouTube video can be watched in Normal view. When it is on the High Definition View, it loads for several minutes. Some High Definition YouTube videos loaded more than several minutes. High Definition View is very clear (clearer than normal view).

Camera : Although it has 3.2 Megapixel camera, it does not have flash LCD & 1.5 megapixel front facing camera for visually insight communication. LCD Flash for rear megapixel & front facing megapixel camera are real lack of functions & features for me.

3G mobile broadband : 3G speed is very fast. Although it is 3G, data icon shows EU. Browsing the Web thru Google search engine & Web browser are very convenient. Making payment, receiving payment and transferring to bank account are safe & secure.

GPS, Map, Navigation, Latitude : This function has Google maps so it is very accurate even though it states approximately within 30 meter accuracy. GPS, Map, Navigation, Latitude have car route, public transportation (either local or distance), bicycle route, and walk route functions so it will get exactly where a person want to reach.

Battery life : At least, it last over 2 day depending on the browsing on the internet.

Adapter or wall charger : This thing is with USB cable so it is very convenient to connect whichever device.

Side micro SD slot : This phone has side micro SD card slot and it can be stored up to 32 GB of micro SD which is very convenient.

Top-Up : This phone is able to Top-Up and beyond talk.

All of these smart phones must have quad band capability which means I can purchase whichever unlocked quad band smart phones I want and it must be working with Virgin Mobile USA. Every smart phone and tablet must have this swype keyboard within exactly on its own size. For me, all of these functions & features, phone service are just convenient communication tool. These are very crucial and must not compromise at all.

Great phone. Battery life isn't the best but for what it does, it's still very acceptable. I don't have a problem with that because I got a car charger and house charger so it's easy to just plug it in and keep it charged. You might want a spare battery if you aren't near a charger and spend a lot of time on the phone. I only charge once every few days.

The qwerty keyboard is wonderful for those of us who have "touch screen-itis" -- that is, we always touch the v when we want c and keep changing screen sizes when all we want is our email. The screen isn't very touchy, though. I don't know if it's just mine or if all of them have to be touched fairly firmly. I've never had a phone with this many features before and the learning curve for me was okay. Couldn't have figured it out without printing out the manual but that's probably because this is my first smart phone. But, the manual is free to download so you can safely buy a used Intercept and access the instructions.

It's a Droid so you can do a lot with a very small investment. All in all, if you want a smart phone but don't want to drop a lot of money, I highly recommend the Intercept. And... bonus time! ... it's amazingly sturdy. It survived my toy fox terrier which is a good thing.

I use Virgin Mobile and have 300 minutes and unlimited data for $35 a month which is a lot better than most plans. I text and use the Internet and apps but don't talk much so it's perfect.

I've had this phone for about 9 months.

The Pros...Easy to use manual keyboard and the auto landscape feature works as it should. The sreen is great and very durable. I've dropped mine a number of times and it has never left a scratch or crack in the screen. The keybord works well but sometimes the virtual keyboard can be preety inaccurate. It supports saving apps to memory card although some apps can't be saved and basically take up space in the phone's limited internal memory. The sound is good and it takes great pictures. Reception os hit or miss but no worse than other Sprint phones I've had in this area.
The Cons...There are many. The phone is horribly slow. The battery life is horrendous. When switching from apps it refuses to completely close the old app and the new app is sluggish until the old app finally ends. Making a call is a lesson in madness. Scrolling through the contact list is almost impossible because the slightest touch on a name brings up their profile to call. When you finally find your person you can tap on the name 2 or 3 times before it responds. After hanging up the phone feezes for at least 30 seconds before you can attempt another call or go to a different screen. Sometimes it will just sit there until you get a notice that it needs to force close. Force closures happen all the time and some of the internal (non-removable) apps start at random. My auto GPS program starts at all random times and sucks the battery down quickly. It is one of the many programs pre installed that can't be removed. The mail system is quirky. Sometimes you get mail and sometimes you will see it only to have it disapper a short time later. It constantly rejects text messages due to memory being full but even after deleting all messages it still gives same error and refuses new texts. I have to constantly pull the battery to reset and on many occasions after reinstalling the battery it will start to boot but then do nothing but stay in the boot phaze until I pull the battery again. It takes forever to boot. Very frustrating phone. A real lemon that Sprint techs have even agreed with.

Great phone, touchscreen is awesome! no hick ups whats so ever. This will work with VM's $25 plan if you still have it.

Keyboard it bigger than the one on the restore, although I hardly use it

Speed is good, have had no problem running apps.
Video streaming on youtube and youporn was flawless it doesn't stop to load and the quality is great.

The phone is easy as hell to Root, once it's rooted you can install a wifi hot spot app. The 3G hot spotted to my laptop is pretty fast! faster than my home wifi.

The image quality if pretty decent, I've heard bad reviews on this. But it shows up great on my phone.

Only downside is the battery, if you barely use your phone it'll last all day. But if you use it regularly you'll need to recharge it at least once in the middle of the day.
Then recharge it again over night.

If you want this phone to flash ROMs I wouldn't recommended it, I loaded 3 ROMS and they all KILLED the battery in just 4 hours. So I went back to the stock one which works great and does 10x more battery life.

But yes you can flash custom ROMs on this phone like an Android Ice cream Sandwhich one. It looks awesome too.

Battery life is ok for its size. Usability suffers a little because it has a slower processor, but it is light years faster than the original G1 Google phone that it is reminiscent of. The slide out physical keyboard is nice for me personally, but the onscreen keyboard works fine as well. My advice: use an SD card of 4gb minimum and store as many apps there as you can. Also I use a task killer (free from android market) to quickly get rid of background apps instead of waiting for the OS to do it. Facebook and others automagically start in the background and hog your limited resources. Interestingly enough the Virgin Mobile version of the Optimus V is zippier and seems to work better despite the fact that its processor is 600mhz as opposed to the Intercept's 800mhz. They aren't from the same company however and I think the Optimus has a coprocessor on board- it is the faster phone. So: I recommend this over the G1 but the LG Optimus V is the best phone in this price range. That being said the Intercept has a slide out kb, the Optimus is all touch- just keep that in mind!