A decent starter phone for a tween, Virgin Mobile’s LG Unify is the best phone (and the only one you should consider) for its Virgin Mobile Custom service. But it’s not the best prepaid phone in the $100-150 range. While it’s compact and has great battery life, we were disappointed with this version of the phone’s performance.
The LG Unify is actually just a rebranding of the LG Optimus F3 ($29.99 at Amazon) , which is out on Sprint, Virgin, Boost, T-Mobile, and MetroPCS. We gave a positive review to the Optimus F3 when it came out on Sprint 15 months ago, celebrating it for its extremely long battery life. This model has highly customized firmware to support the Virgin Mobile Custom service, and it turns out that also means it has somewhat different performance.
Read the Optimus F3 review for a basic rundown of the phone’s performance and capabilities, and our full Virgin Mobile Custom review for the details of the new service plans. Here, we’ll focus on what makes the Unify different from the Sprint phone we looked at last year.
Our Experts Have Tested 61 Products in the Mobile Phones Category in the Past Year
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying
. (See how we test.)
Editors’ Note: The slideshow below is for the LG Optimus F3 on Sprint. This is the same hardware.
Similar Products
LG Realm (Boost Mobile)
Moto G (Unlocked)
Motorola Moto G (2014, Boost Mobile)
LG Optimus F3 (Sprint)
Voice and Performance
We thought the Optimus F3 was a very good voice phone on Sprint, but something’s gone wrong with the Unify. I had poor voice quality when testing this phone on Sprint’s network, with a fuzzy overall sound and distortion at top volumes. Wind caused dropouts in my voice calls. The speakerphone was better—clearer, if a little fuzzy—although wind noise still caused some problems there. Wind noise also meant the phone had trouble understanding names for Bluetooth voice dialing, just like the F3 did.
While the Unify is an LTE phone, it lacks Sprint’s new Spark frequency bands. That means it will get lower LTE speeds than competitors like the LG Volt ($29.99 at Amazon) on Boost. In our Fastest Mobile Networks tests, we found that Spark more than doubled Internet speeds from an average of 3-6Mbps to 11-14Mbps. So not having Spark is a significant minus.
Sprint’s LTE network was too slow to do our LTE streaming video rundown test, so we had to resort to Wi-Fi. The 2,460mAh battery combines with the relatively small screen here to turn in solid, if not extraordinary battery life. We got 6 hours, 18 minutes of continuous YouTube streaming, surprisingly less than the 7 hours, 25 minutes we got with the Sprint version of this phone.
The Unify comes with 4GB of internal storage of which only 1.24GB is free. It runs the obsolete Android 4.1.2 with no expectation of an
, on a decent 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor. That’s a version of Android from 2012, and it lacks some major performance enhancements that have come since then.
Although there’s a microSD card slot for your photos and videos, you can’t load apps onto it, which means you’ll be quite limited in the number of games you can store on this phone. Virgin seems to understand that, so most of the ‘preloaded’ bloatware on the home screen are just deletable shortcuts to Google Play.
Competition and Conclusions
We primarily recommend LTE phones nowadays. Sprint’s 3G network is so slow as to be almost unusable, and its LTE network is spreading. The future is LTE. Since the Unify is Virgin Mobile Custom’s only LTE phone, this is the phone we recommend if you’re looking for Custom’s flexible plans or parental controls.
Last year I was just impressed with the Optimus F3 having LTE at all. Now, there are better values at comparable prices. The LG Volt, an all-around better phone with a better screen, camera, and Sprint Spark, is $143 at Virgin as of this writing. On Boost, the superior HTC Desire 510 is $99.99. On Cricket, both the Moto G LTE and the Desire 510 are $149. If you aren’t married to Virgin Mobile Custom, those are all better choices for prepaid phones at this price point.
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A decent starter phone for a tween, Virgin Mobile’s LG Unify is the best phone (and the only one you should consider) for its Virgin Mobile Custom service. But it’s not the best prepaid phone in the $100-150 range. While it’s compact and has great battery life, we were disappointed with this version of the phone’s performance.
The LG Unify is actually just a rebranding of the LG Optimus F3 ($29.99 at Amazon) , which is out on Sprint, Virgin, Boost, T-Mobile, and MetroPCS. We gave a positive review to the Optimus F3 when it came out on Sprint 15 months ago, celebrating it for its extremely long battery life. This model has highly customized firmware to support the Virgin Mobile Custom service, and it turns out that also means it has somewhat different performance.
Read the Optimus F3 review for a basic rundown of the phone’s performance and capabilities, and our full Virgin Mobile Custom review for the details of the new service plans. Here, we’ll focus on what makes the Unify different from the Sprint phone we looked at last year.
Our Experts Have Tested 61 Products in the Mobile Phones Category in the Past Year
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. (See how we test.)
Editors’ Note: The slideshow below is for the LG Optimus F3 on Sprint. This is the same hardware.
Similar Products
LG Realm (Boost Mobile)
Moto G (Unlocked)
Motorola Moto G (2014, Boost Mobile)
LG Optimus F3 (Sprint)
Voice and Performance
We thought the Optimus F3 was a very good voice phone on Sprint, but something’s gone wrong with the Unify. I had poor voice quality when testing this phone on Sprint’s network, with a fuzzy overall sound and distortion at top volumes. Wind caused dropouts in my voice calls. The speakerphone was better—clearer, if a little fuzzy—although wind noise still caused some problems there. Wind noise also meant the phone had trouble understanding names for Bluetooth voice dialing, just like the F3 did.
While the Unify is an LTE phone, it lacks Sprint’s new Spark frequency bands. That means it will get lower LTE speeds than competitors like the LG Volt ($29.99 at Amazon) on Boost. In our Fastest Mobile Networks tests, we found that Spark more than doubled Internet speeds from an average of 3-6Mbps to 11-14Mbps. So not having Spark is a significant minus.
Sprint’s LTE network was too slow to do our LTE streaming video rundown test, so we had to resort to Wi-Fi. The 2,460mAh battery combines with the relatively small screen here to turn in solid, if not extraordinary battery life. We got 6 hours, 18 minutes of continuous YouTube streaming, surprisingly less than the 7 hours, 25 minutes we got with the Sprint version of this phone.
The Unify comes with 4GB of internal storage of which only 1.24GB is free. It runs the obsolete Android 4.1.2 with no expectation of an upgrade, on a decent 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor. That’s a version of Android from 2012, and it lacks some major performance enhancements that have come since then.
Although there’s a microSD card slot for your photos and videos, you can’t load apps onto it, which means you’ll be quite limited in the number of games you can store on this phone. Virgin seems to understand that, so most of the ‘preloaded’ bloatware on the home screen are just deletable shortcuts to Google Play.
Competition and Conclusions
We primarily recommend LTE phones nowadays. Sprint’s 3G network is so slow as to be almost unusable, and its LTE network is spreading. The future is LTE. Since the Unify is Virgin Mobile Custom’s only LTE phone, this is the phone we recommend if you’re looking for Custom’s flexible plans or parental controls.
Last year I was just impressed with the Optimus F3 having LTE at all. Now, there are better values at comparable prices. The LG Volt, an all-around better phone with a better screen, camera, and Sprint Spark, is $143 at Virgin as of this writing. On Boost, the superior HTC Desire 510 is $99.99. On Cricket, both the Moto G LTE and the Desire 510 are $149. If you aren’t married to Virgin Mobile Custom, those are all better choices for prepaid phones at this price point.
Like What You’re Reading?
Sign up for Fully Mobilized newsletter to get our top mobile tech stories delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
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May 22, 2022
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