Dreading Valentine’s Day? You Can Still Love Your Sprint Camera Phone with These Handy Tips for Capturing the Perfect Shot

OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Let’s be real: A lot of people dislike Valentine’s Day. Too sappy, too forced, too sweet and too pink, they might say. But Sprint® (NYSE:S) customers can find one thing to love come Feb. 14: Their Sprint phones with high-quality cameras.

With cameras boasting up to 8 megapixels and a wide array of downloadable photography apps, Sprint Android™ smartphones , such as the Samsung Epic™ 4G and HTC EVO™ 4G, can make even the grumpiest “Love Stinks” fan smile. And their smile will get even wider if they follow these tips from professional photographer Perry Reichanadter of Wayne Images in Indianapolis:

Get close to your subject.
Look at the background and make sure your subjects don’t have too many objects behind them, such as light poles or signs. Or long-stemmed red roses.
Keep the sun or light to your back, otherwise your subject may come out too dark. Just like your mood.
If you’re taking a picture of yourself mean-mugging, hold up the phone at a 45-degree angle, with your arm fully extended.

Another way to get that perfect shot is with free or low-priced photography apps available from Android Market or BlackBerry App World. Users can easily edit those photos or add special effects right on their mobile phone.

FxCamera: Lets users apply a variety of fun, cool effects to photographs. Effects include ToyCam, Polandroid, Fisheye, SymmetriCam and Warhol. It also has a color filter to make photos mono (black and white), sepia tone or with a negative effect. Available for free in Android Market™.
PicSay – Photo Editor: This app lets users improve photos with color corrections, be creative with paint, word balloons and stickers, or have fun with distortions, cutouts, special effects and more. Add text with ease using styled word balloons and titles. Make fun of your friends by decorating their pictures with hair, glasses, beards and other stickers. Or get the message across with your picture by adding various pointers, symbols, and other shapes. Available for free in Android Market.
Photo Editor: Allows BlackBerry® smartphone users to edit their photos, adjust the brightness level, crop, rotate or recolor the picture to sepia, black and white or invert image colors before sharing the photo with friends. Available in BlackBerry App World for 99 cents per download.
Camera Fun Free: Allows users to see effects – such as canvas, mirror, pinch, sepia, sketch and water color – right through their device camera lens before taking a picture. Available for free in Android Market.

With these great apps and with one of these Sprint phones with high-quality cameras, you likely won’t even miss your point-and-shoot digital camera:

HTC EVO 4G: Equipped with two cameras – a front-facing 1.3MP camera and rear-facing 8MP camera with dual LED flash so you can capture high-quality images on-the-go. HTC EVO 4G is available for $199.99 with a new two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade and after a $100 mail-in rebate (pricing excludes taxes and surcharges).
LG Optimus S™: The Optimus comes equipped with a 3.2MP camera with 2x digital zoom. Available in charcoal or purple for just $49.99 with a new two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade and after a $100 mail-in rebate (pricing excludes taxes and surcharges).
BlackBerryStyle™ 9670: Capture and share the latest pics and videos of your true love with the Style’s dynamic 5MP camera/camcorder. BlackBerry Style is available for $99.99 with a new two-year service agreement or eligible upgrade and after a $100 mail-in rebate (pricing excludes taxes and surcharges).

So the photos are taken, the edits are made and now it’s time to send them to all your friends so they can see what you really think of Valentine’s Day. With Sprint Picture Mail and Sprint’s 3G and 4G networks, the transmission is easy and getting more popular with each passing holiday. During the 2010 holiday season, the number of Sprint Picture Mail traffic hit record highs and nearly doubled from the 2009 season. On Christmas Day, a record 51 million photos were sent and received by Sprint customers, with 46.2 million sent and received on New Year’s Eve. Both numbers reflect a burgeoning trend: Not only are customers using their phones to their fullest potential, but they’re relying on a robust 3G network that reaches more than 283 million people nationwide, and a 4G network that was the first from a national wireless carrier and is now in more than 70 markets.

Sprint’s Everything Data plan with Any Mobile, Anytime^SM includes unlimited picture and video messaging, unlimited Web, texting and calling to and from any mobile in America while on the Sprint network, starting at just $69.99 per month plus required $10 Premium Data add-on charge for smartphones – a savings of $39.99 per month vs. Verizon’s comparable plan with unlimited talk, text and Web, and $35 per month vs. AT&T’s comparable plan with unlimited talk, text and just 2GB of data.

Further, the Sprint Free Guarantee is the only full money-back guarantee on service plans in the wireless industry today, allowing customers to try a new line of service with Sprint for 30 days. If a customer isn’t satisfied, they can cancel service and return their device to be reimbursed for the device purchase and activation fee, get the early termination fee waived, get a full refund for monthly service plan recurring charges incurred, and get all associated taxes and fees waived. In addition, Sprint will waive the restocking fee for new customer exchanges as part of this policy. Refund excludes usage not included in the service plan, premium content, third-party billing and international charges.

Commitment shy? Sprint also offers prepaid options from Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. This Valentine’s Day, Virgin Mobile’s Samsung Intercept also offers photo and editing applications free through Android Market. In addition, love birds can stay connected without worrying about overage charges with Virgin Mobile’s Beyond Talk plans starting at $25 a month including unlimited messaging, email, IM, web and social networking access with 300 minutes of voice. The BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8530 from Boost Mobile is also available for $199.99 and offers access to BlackBerry App World, featuring a broad and growing catalog of third-party mobile applications.

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 more than 48.8 million customers at the end of the third quarter of 2010 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, Common Cents Mobile and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 6 in its 2010 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.