Well, the rumor mill failed this time as there wasn’t even a hint of new phones coming out from Virgin Mobile before Friday. I can speculate here as well: the old rumor of the Optimus Black is probably still true despite this release because the Black is a premium phone like the Triumph, and it’ll hit in December if at all.
The Optimus Slider is a successor to the original Optimus V for right now (again, the Black is better). It caters to a different type of people though, I suppose. The keyboard will help people transition from regular phones to smartphones. The Android 2.3 system will also be a welcome feature considering its speed bonuses and improvements. In fact, I know a person in my family who probably couldn’t make the jump from a BlackBerry to Android without a physical keyboard. So this solves that issue.
I’ve read about a 600 Mhz processor and a 800 Mhz processor, and I’m leaning towards the latter. It’s been almost a year and a slight bump would be for the best. Save the keyboard and the speed bump and minor cosmetic changes, it might as well be identical to the Optimus V.
The Wildfire S is less appealing. Why release sliding phones together? It seems odd. It adds confusion, which is better?
In fact, looking at the specsheet straight from HTC’s glorious website, you can see it has a 600 Mhz processor which probably slower than a new phone should be. Further, and much more concerning, the lame 1230 mAh battery. My Optimus V has a ~1400 mAh battery and I can hardly get through the day without getting into the critical zone. I’m sure HTC Sense won’t improve battery life either.
I might have other ideas about this release in the middle of no where. Virgin Mobile pushed it’s throttling to next year. Perhaps they had this in the pipe ready to come out at the same time they were planning to begin throttling. What better way to appease the public than to release new stuff? Or maybe a major deal fell through and the reason for the throttling wasn’t needed right now. That’s my bet.