Sprint's Safe and Found combines parental controls with location info

While all major cell providers have some sort of parental control app like AT&T's Smart Limits or Verizon's FamilyBase, Sprint may have leapfrogged them all with even more features. The company just announced Safe & Found, a new service that adds in real-time location, geo-fencing capabilities, an SOS button and a way to find, lock and wipe any phone if lost or stolen. The service is available now for iOS and Android users for $7 per month. You can get a free 15-day trial to check it out, too.

If you've used an app like Life360, the new Sprint service will seem familiar. You can find any enrolled family member on a map in real time, create geo-fences to let you know when someone comes into or leaves a geographical area, and even check in so your family knows where you're at. Safe & Found provides all the regular parental controls, too, like restricting phone usage to specific numbers and/or certain times of the day. Like Apple's Find My iPhone, Sprint's service also gives you the power to not only find a lost or stolen phone but to also lock and wipe it of personal data remotely. The addition of an emergency alert that will send an SOS to all family phones seems like a pretty handy feature, too.

The app is available on both iOS and Android app stores, and while there are many devices in the marketing images, the app is strictly for phones running iOS 9 and up or Android Jelly Bean and later. Sprint confirmed that you can use a computer and web browser to monitor family member locations and set application permissions on any Safe & Found devices. Smartwatches will get notifications from the app only if set up on the phone in the regular way.