Now that school is starting you may be thinking of getting your kids a cell phone of their very own! One reason you may have for this, is with school can come some crazy scheduling. Some parents feel more comfortable picking up and dropping off at various activities when they have a way to always get in touch with their kids. Now is the perfect time to get some new phones at T-Mobile too, because starting September 5th they will have an all new unlimited data plan available! If you have teens, an unlimited plan is such a great way to go. No need to worry about going over your text or data limit, since there isn’t one! Not only will T-Mobile have a great new unlimited data plan, but they have some great apps that I was very impressed with at an event I attended this summer. Let me break ’em down for ya!
FamilyWhere – This app allows parents to know exactly where your child is, and allows kids to check in when they have reached certain locations. You can set up scheduled alerts for when your child is expected to arrive at swimming practice. Using the check-in service from the app, available for free from Google Play for T-Mobile customers, is completely free. For the location part of the service there is an additional monthly fee that will give you access to the location information for all phones connected to the account.
Web Guard – This is a filter you can set on each individual phone. You can set it up for free in your T-Mobile account. What is great is you can set different filter levels for each phone, and base it on the maturity level of the child. While it’s definitely not perfect, and some content could get through, it’s a good addition to your arsenal of filters and protective measures for your children’s mobile devices.
Family Allowances – If you aren’t going to go with an unlimited plan, you will definitely enjoy the Family Allowances feature from T-Mobile. You can set a limit on each phone for how many minutes, texts and how much data each phone can get. Maybe your daughter texts more than your son, you can give her more monthly texts, and then the phone will stop being able to text when they hit their limit. You could even set it a little lower than what your monthly plan provides and they can do extra chores around the house to earn more texts or minutes. Then you can hop online and increase their limit when those tasks are completed. What I really like about this though is the limit you can set on app downloads. It can be way to easy for a child to purchase an app, or even purchase items within an app (like coins in a game), so being able to limit that access is a huge benefit. You can also set times of day when they can’t text, like during school, or at night when they should be sleeping!
MobileLife Family Organizer – T-Mobile and Cozi teamed up to offer this new application. Through the app you can access your shared family calender, shopping lists, and to do lists. You can also have it sync with Microsoft Outlook, use the family message board to push a message out to all family members and keep track of a family journal. Anyone who knows me, knows I love me some widgets, and this has got some great ones with a to do list widget and a shopping list widget, you’ll always know exactly where you stand just by looking at your phone or tablet! With school starting and everyone getting back on schedule, a centralized family organizer is really essential to keep everyone on the same page.
Lookout Mobile Security – This another great partnership for T-Mobile. Lookout is the top antivirus program for Android devices. If you don’t think your phone can get a virus, think AGAIN! T-Mobile took it a step further and offers custom SCREAM Tones to help you find your phone, even if it’s on silent. You simply activate the phone’s “SCREAM” by logging onto the website and clicking “SCREAM” The phone will get louder and louder until you find your phone and stop it, or until it reaches the top level of it’s volume, but it will continue screaming until you manually stop it. I don’t know how many times I’ve had issues finding my phone because it was on silent mode. This is the perfect solution for that!
Now, onto the fun part of this post. T-Mobile has been gracious enough to allow me to give away a tablet!! The T-Mobile SpringBoard with Google is a 7 inch Android powered tablet. It has wifi, or you can sign up for a data plan to use the tablet anywhere you go! The tablet also has 16 GB of internal memory with a MicroSD card slot that can boost that up to 32 GB of more memory! The tablet has a Qualcomm dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, which means it’s pretty speedy as well. My tablet is my personal organizer. I carry it everywhere just like I used to carry my day planner. I also use it to “consume” media like magazines, reading blog posts and browsing the internet. Plus… it’s a great size for browsing through Pinterest and Instagram!
To enter to win simply fill out the form below. Only ONE entry allowed per person. See my official rules. Entries will be accepted until 11:59 PM PST on August 31st.
GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED
I was not compensated in any way for this post, T-Mobile is sponsoring the giveaway of the tablet.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.
Who won?
Jen F. of Minnesota was contacted and has responded in the appropriate amount of time. Congrats to Jen!