Holiday Smartphone Buying and Safety Tips for Parents

Sprint Guardian safety and security applications allow parents to monitor and manage child’s smartphone usage

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), December 03, 2012 – Smartphones are sure to top many teens’ and tweens’ holiday wish lists. According to Nielsen, American teenagers between 13 and 17 years old demonstrate the most dramatic increase in U.S. smartphone adoption, growing from 36 percent of teens who own mobile phones saying they owned a smartphone in July 2011 to 58 percent in July 2012 – a 61 percent increase.*

Parents may be concerned about the responsibility that comes along with owning a smartphone: How do I ensure my son or daughter makes wise decisions when using their smartphone? How do I keep it from disrupting school, sleep and family time? What happens if they lose it?

Applications within the Sprint Guardian family safety and security bundle can help give parents peace of mind by allowing them to:

• Monitor their child’s talk, text and app use habits.
• Browse their child’s contacts and apps.
• Lock their child’s phone during dinner, school, late at night or while driving.
• Quickly and easily locate family members on an interactive map.
• Set up automatic location checks to be notified when their child made it to school (or another destination) safely and on time.
• Protect smartphones from evolving mobile threats including malware, spyware, phishing and malicious websites.
• Find a family member’s lost phone on a map, sound an alarm, and lock or wipe the device to protect personal information.
• Easily protect and manage their family’s mobile devices, including backing up photos, contacts and call history.

“I encourage parents to have an open conversation with their children about how to use their mobile phone safely and responsibly but also to take advantage of technology available to them, such as these Sprint Guardian applications,” said parenting expert Amy McCready. “We can’t always control our kids, but we can try to control the environment and take away that temptation to use their phone at inappropriate times. Instead of physically taking the phone away, I have found the Sprint Guardian applications really helpful, convenient and affordable.”

Sprint Guardian features leading mobile applications from Safely, a division of Location Labs, and Lookout. The Family Safety Essentials from Safely enables families to protect their phone-carrying children through location checks and limits on texting while driving or at school. The device security bundle from Lookout helps customers protect their mobile devices from loss and malware.

Family Safety Essentials

The family safety tools bring together three applications to help parents keep their kids safe and focused on what matters whether they are at home, at school or on-the-go. Sprint Mobile Controls, Sprint Drive First and Sprint Family Locator are available as a Family Safety Essentials bundle for $9.99 per month for up to five lines on the same account.

Lookout Family Mobile Security

Lookout Family enables Sprint customers to manage their phone security by protecting against identity theft and fraud, find a family member’s missing device when it is lost or stolen, and back up their precious data. Lookout Family bundle is $4.99 per month, or $49.99 per year, for up to five lines on the same account.

Savings by Purchasing Bundles

The safety and security bundles for Sprint customers on family plans deliver significant savings versus purchasing each app for each line. Customers have the option to purchase both bundles for a single monthly fee of just $14.98. For a family of five, that offers a 73 percent savings — more than $39 per month for both bundles.

Downloading Sprint Guardian

Sprint Guardian is available on many Sprint Android™-powered devices through Sprint Zone. Visit www.sprint.com/sprintguardian for more information and a free 15-day trial of Family Safety Essentials.

*Nielsen Mobile Insights

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served nearly 56 million customers at the end of the third quarter of 2012 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. The American Customer Satisfaction Index rated Sprint No. 1 among all national carriers in customer satisfaction and most improved, across all 47 industries, during the last four years. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 3 in both its 2011 and 2012 Green Rankings, listing it as one of the nation’s greenest companies, the highest of any telecommunications company. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.

Contact(s):