Hi there!
Just got my first "Hero only" phonebill after getting the device and I must say I'm pretty shocked. It was 3 times normal!
I have only used Facebook INTERMITTANTLY and not logged in under the "Social" function. Twitter has been off. I haven't used email yet. I have only used Android Market under wifi and my only real usage has been various news sites with iPhone adapted webpages.
The only thing I can tell that's "on" has been the weather.
So I installed 3G Watchdog to monitor the usage and this is what I found out:
- In a twelve hour window with
- No Browser usage, no Facebook/Twitter/Flickr/Market
- Setting for Google has been "Enable background data usage" but not Auto-sync
- No Exchange usage or email
- Enable always on mobile has been activated
- No other internet function is activated as I can tell
- This has resulted in 610kb if data usage, that's 1.2mb in 24hrs
- That's 36MB a month, 436mb a year (and I pay per mb)
To me, this is "data out the widow" which I havent used, but the Phone has somehow "eaten" up.
I feel as though I havent got much control over how and when the Hero used data, the settings are not "clear" in the Android/Hero settings on administrating data usage. In my instance, it uses data without me needing it.
Is there any way to monitor WHICH program or function uses data without need? Ie. something like 3G Watchdog but more detailed?
there is net-counter.. but its familiar to 3g watchdog..
Android phones, and phones like them (e.g.iPhone) are really not designed to be used with "pay per MB" plan. I couldn't tell you what processes are going to be "consuming" data, but I'd consider 1.2MB to be pretty insignificant, though I understand that if you're paying by the MB your opinion would be significantly different.
I know it's probably not much help, but if I were you, since you are not using any of the "push" facilities of the device (e.g. GMail) I'd be inclined to switch off mobile internet and only switch it on as you need it.
Regards,
Dave
foxmeister said:
Android phones, and phones like them (e.g.iPhone) are really not designed to be used with "pay per MB" plan. I couldn't tell you what processes are going to be "consuming" data, but I'd consider 1.2MB to be pretty insignificant, though I understand that if you're paying by the MB your opinion would be significantly different.
I know it's probably not much help, but if I were you, since you are not using any of the "push" facilities of the device (e.g. GMail) I'd be inclined to switch off mobile internet and only switch it on as you need it.
Regards,
Dave
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good advise there for you. 1.2Mb is very little though in the big scheme of things. Its about a minute of a typical MP3 or less than the capacity of a floppy disk (if you remember those).
The phone is designed to be used with an unlimited data plan - its a cloud based phone really.
As an aside, I do think these plans are still too expensive in reality.
foxmeister said:
Android phones, and phones like them (e.g.iPhone) are really not designed to be used with "pay per MB" plan. I couldn't tell you what processes are going to be "consuming" data, but I'd consider 1.2MB to be pretty insignificant, though I understand that if you're paying by the MB your opinion would be significantly different.
I know it's probably not much help, but if I were you, since you are not using any of the "push" facilities of the device (e.g. GMail) I'd be inclined to switch off mobile internet and only switch it on as you need it.
Regards,
Dave
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm aware of this fact Dave, I had the Diamond before I got the Hero. But what I lack is a built in function to "control and monitior usage". As of right now, it seems like it lives it's own life. If you have an unlimited plan, you wont really care. But Another point is the fact that this "unwanted" data usage consumes battery power and thus limits the battery life.
All I want is to be in control of my phone....
I am considering an unlimited plan or a 1gb/2gb plan. But there is a "cap" on my current plan where I won't pay for data over 3MB every day, but it's still a lot when you use that much every day.
You could try something like Droidwall ( http://code.google.com/p/droidwall/ ), but this only works for rooted devices.
At least you should be able to "whitelist" the apps that you want to be able to talk to the outside world, and see if this has any material effect on your data usage.
Regards,
Dave
Perhaps something obvious, but have you turned off the 'always on mobile data'?
You can find that under the wireless controls, mobile network settings.
And with a lot stuff (like the weather applet) you can disable the automatic updates.
Also turn off some data sync stuff under settings, data synchronization.(Google services for example).
Hope this helps a bit, although you might have done this already
Droid wall might help otherwise as a previous post also says
I had the same problem as I don't have a plan and my carrier charges per mb , so I installed APNdroid (it changes the APN settings , and restores it if you want to use mobile network ) .
HTC even provide a widget to turn mobile data on and off quickly. Put it on your Home screen.
I used this while on vacation to avoid huge data costs.
Also set Google synchronisation to non automatic, sync it when you need too.
TBH though, the Hero is such a data centric device, its pretty boring with no live data connection... as are iPhone and any other smartphone.
RaptorRVL said:
Perhaps something obvious, but have you turned off the 'always on mobile data'?
You can find that under the wireless controls, mobile network settings.
And with a lot stuff (like the weather applet) you can disable the automatic updates.
Also turn off some data sync stuff under settings, data synchronization.(Google services for example).
Hope this helps a bit, although you might have done this already
Droid wall might help otherwise as a previous post also says
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"Always on" should not use up data as it is only there to keep the connection open so the phone doesn't have to connect each time an application needs to use 2G/3G/3.5G
I disabled the always on, weather etc... but something is still consuming data. Must be one of the apps circumventing the phone settings.
But my point is this, it is to diffucult/complicated/cumbersome/unintuetive so control the amount of data the Hero uses.
Also make sure stocks is set not to update.
If you are really concerned then just turn mobile data off until you need to use it (via the widget).
The point of these type of phone is to connect to many different services. Its simple to turn all data off if you wish.
The expectation for the smartphone is that it will be dragging information in constantly, keeping you up to date with your social network.
However, you might try WiSyncPlus to automatically disable data access when you are not in range of known WiFi networks. That might be the easiest way of controlling your data consumption over the cell/mobile network.
SOLVED:
The new official Facebook App was to blame for almost the entire 1,2mb a day usage. I did not log out, just pressed the home button and the app was running in the background updating.
Is this a bug? Is there any need for it to update when you don't have it open? I'm thinking battery power here as well as data usage.
Sebastian768 said:
SOLVED:
The new official Facebook App was to blame for almost the entire 1,2mb a day usage. I did not log out, just pressed the home button and the app was running in the background updating.
Is this a bug? Is there any need for it to update when you don't have it open? I'm thinking battery power here as well as data usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The "Home" button doesn't actually shut down the app , it merely puts it to sleep. The "Back" button on the other hand closes the app and removes it from memory.
Linux has it very own and famous scheduler which on its own manages sleeping apps and can discard them from memory at will when the need for more memory exists
In settings you have the option to set the refresh interval, you can change it to 0. Might also be worth using a task manager to kill unwanted programs.
Devs need to write their apps correctly TBH. If its in the background and the user has not set its background processes to keep working, then it should stay silent.
ONLY if a user elects to have background processes running should an app continue to work away.
A simple setting in an apps preferences is all thats needed.
The back button to kill apps... thats pretty silly TBH especially with Browser. You would have to hit back multiple times to return to the very first web page you opened before you actually exited the app... very cumbersome.
Again, a simple setting in each app and indeed globally in the Hero's settings would make life far less confusing.
On Froyo...Unable to get "pre fetch" articles working reliably.
I have 5 tabs of news..3 of them custom. Set to 3 hour checks , prefetch articles , not not images.
Id say maybe 1 out of every 10 articles actually prefetches. The rest load up the browser and I have to wait for it to launch...before Froyo It was at least close to half.
80% of this app usage for me is Offline reading.
Anyone able to get this working properly ?
I just cant get it to function properly on offline viewing , anyone have any recommendations for an alternative ?
if you have an active data connection then the news app will not use the prefetch article and will attempt to load the latest version using the browser. if you disable data then it will use the prefetched article, this is by design (which i think sucks, should be option to force useage of prefetched article)
I'm looking for a decent data usage app.
I can use Deezer without data coming out of my allowance, so I need an app that can exclude apps from its count.
I've tried the stock app, Onavo, and Data Usage, but none of them offer the facility I need.
The most aacurate I've used so far is 3G call meter. In most cases there are downlodable profiles for different carriers and plans. I don't like the widgets though. They're pretty basic. All other apps counted minutes ok, but most times data was way off.
My data manager hands down
Onavo here.
Do any of these apps have the ability to exclude certain apps from the date usage count?
Try watch dog
Sent from my SM-N900
great app
I am 2 days into my month with Koodo, but I am already at 4 gigs just in 3 hours. I checked my usage to see when and it looked like I was getting about 95mb usage per minute for like an hour. I thought at first that it was from tethering, but then I saw it was also before I was tethering, so it has to be from my phone. Any apps that can see this stuff?
Thanks
Joe
Assuming you aren't on a custom ROM it should be built in. from the home screen tap menu > system settings > Connections (tab on the top) > Data Usage and scroll down. you can also change your data usage cycle to get it to be a little more accurate. If you're using a custom ROM you still have the potential of that being built in.
If you want to go even further and have a rooted device, you can try Network Log on the Google Play store...
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.networklog&hl=en
I think Onavo Count is great to do this and it has another app called Onavo Extend that compresses your data and gets you more bang for your GB's
Has anybody noticed that my magazine and flip board use a lot of data? Well it's mostly the Flipboard app. I can read the news for maybe 20 minutes and goes through a few articles and it can rack up almost 50 megabytes of data whereas if I use my browser (Opera) I use maybe 10 megabytes of data for the same amount of reading. It looks great but not easy on the monthly data allowance.
Agreed - they are data and processor and battery hogs.
If you need your news updates I'd rather suggest MyBoard (added by Samsung to S5 in Germany, don't know about other markets) or very similar Taptu app - they work great with minimum data usage. If you configure them to open stuff with internal browser it'll be even lighter on the data usage.
Anyhow - in most cases the articles load without pictures - and I'm happy with that - and if you want to access those just tap on the bottom to open in browser (internal to the app or external - in your case and mine Opera).
Hope this helps
Thanks good to know I'm not the only one. I don't really need it that much but just pass time while I'm waiting for something. Looks like I will stick with my browser instead of using flipboard.