TechBeasts

By Pete Pachal1 Image: thouston6

Unsure if your kid's ready for a cellphone and all the rapid-fire texting, hours-long phone calls and untoward Snapchatting that will inevitably follow? Has Virgin Mobile got the phone for you.

The brand (operated by Sprint in the U.S.) is launching a new smartphone plan, available exclusively through Walmart, called Custom, and it lives up to its label: owners can customize their wireless plan to their liking, with up to four lines on the same plan. Families are the primary target, and many aspects of the plan are meant to cater to the needs of parents.

Case on point: the pricing, which starts at just $6.98 for a single line. However, that includes just 20 minutes of talk time and 20 text messages and no data. From there, the customer can add more talk, text and data, in a la carte. Unlimited talk and text costs $35, for example, but you can add in increments (for lower fees), too.

Data plans are available from 250MB ($8) megabytes all the way to 2GB ($28). Extra lines are $6.98 each (up to five), and the minutes, texts and data are shared among all the phones in the plan — unless you opt for unlimited, which has to be tied to a single phone (there is no unlimited data plan).

What makes Virgin Mobile Custom special are the extensive parental controls.

What makes Virgin Mobile Custom special are the extensive parental controls. The account owner can restrict both which apps each user can use, and when they can use them. Don't want Sally checking Instagram during family time? You can tell her phone to disable the app for an hour, two hours or permanently.

 The Custom plan also offers a few option extras like all-you-can-eat data for specific networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Unlimited access to those apps costs $5 each (per phone) or $15 for all four. A similar deal exists for music, letting you stream all you want from Spotify, Pandora, SoundCloud, iHeartRadio and Shazam for an extra $5 A month.

Need a few extra minutes this week, or want to tack on Facebook sharing? You can adjust things anytime — it's a prepaid plan, after all. Just fire up the management app and pick your poison.

Virgin's Custom plan is only available for three phones: the ZTE Emblem ($79.88), the LG Pulse ($99.88) and the LG Unify ($129.88). They're all basically low-to-midrange models (the Unify is the only one with 4G LTE), which should suit most kids just fine.

Luckily for parents, you don't need a Custom phone to get your kids on the plan. The account owner can manage the Custom phones via the web as well as a dedicated app coming to iOS and Android on Sept. 1. That way, you can keep your iPhone or Samsung Galaxy while your kids rock the Custom models.
The parental controls are probably the most granular we've ever seen in smartphone management, which many parents will appreciate. However, we're not sure if they'll be as excited about the inherent complexity of Custom, but Sprint has probably made it about as straightforward as such a highly customizable plan can be.

Correction: The pricing for unlimited music streaming from the services mentioned is $5 a month, and not $20 as this article originally stated.
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