Review: Alcatel Venture for Virgin Mobile USA
The Venture offers only the stock Android messaging tools, with Facebook and Twitter tossed in for good measure. The generic email, Gmail, Google Talk, and Messaging apps are on board, and function just as they do on other Android 2.3 devices. The email/Gmail clients work well and offer plenty of options for managing/interacting with email. The SMS app offers threaded conversations, and Google Talk works well for messaging Google contacts in real-time. If you want any sort of IM other than Google Talk, you'll have to find your own solution.
It's nice to see the full Facebook and Twitter apps pre-loaded. Both are out of date, and needed to be updated, but at least they are there. I am surprised Virgin didn't put a social networking catch-all app or other similar service on board.
Voicemail is available, but visual voicemail is not. There are no video chat services on board, and the Venture doesn't have a front-facing camera anyway.