Just to reiterate the OP, she says she only uses the phone when away from home, IE, should would be using public WIFI instead of 3G.
Anyway, I would say the problem is on the phone company’s end. Even with a misbehaving app, 5 GB is a lot to rack up on a phone. I use Pandora on my phone all the time and I still never rack up 5 gigs a month.
True, a non-WPA2 WiFi network is probably less secure than 3G, that’s a good point. Along those lines, I think that sevenwood and enalzi have cleared up the OPs intentions with that phraseology.
Given that the OP only uses the phone away from home and not for streaming audio/video, I agree that it’s probably an error with the phone company. It’s pretty hard to rack up 5GB on a phone through normal use.
Enalzi did, anyway. I’m not sure that I accomplished anything along those lines.
This is phone specific implementation. Some devices may pick WiFi if available, regardless of strength. Some devices have an option for the user to pick what order the services are used in.
Your cellular carrier typically doesn’t know what you are doing on WiFi. I’m not aware of any platform that enables the cellular carriers to bill you for WiFi usage.
As for the OP - my first guess was you had a web page loaded that auto refreshes, and left it running in the background. It would explain the variability of usage, amongst other things.
-D/a
Whereas from my dealings with phone companies, I tend to classify this under
“Damn, he was paying attention”
Well, that’s how it was explained to me, that connecting to the Internet through my cell phone would be a secure connection, unlike most public wi-fi, where any bozo on the same open network with the right sniffing software can grab my passwords and stuff. Not sure how somebody would do that when I’m using my broadband connection.
Apps on home screen(s):
Calculator: Used a few times
Voice Search: Don’t know what that is
Talk: Don’t know what that is
Market: Have used, duh
Maps: Tried it once, disappointed.
Evernote: Haven’t set up yet
MyContacts: ???
Tone Room: Downloaded one ringtone
Your Navigator: ???
Help
SoundHound: Downloaded but haven’t used
AndRecord: Ditto
Camera: Have uploaded a few photos
Color Flashlight: Toy
Contacts: Have used, duh
RunKeeper: GPS run tracker. Tried it once or twice.
Aldiko: eBook reader. Downloaded a bunch of public domain books.
Twitter: Occasional use. Had a couple of heavy days.
Phone: Few calls.
Email: Occasional use. Don’t bother with downloading attachments; I wait till I’m home.
Browser: Some surfing, again, only a few days a month.
Facebook: Ditto.
Winamp
Gallery
YouTube: Might have used a few times.
Find a Starbucks: Might have used a few times.
The Weather Channel; Occasional use.
PointsPlus: Weight Watchers app.
Dropbox: Haven’t set up yet.
Apps on pull-up tab (not already on home screen):
3G Watchdog
Adobe Reader
Alarm Clock
Amazon
Backgrounds: Wallpapers.
Best Buy
Books: Not sure what this is.
Calendar
CityID: Not sure what this is.
Compass
File Viewer: Haven’t used
GMail: Never used.
IMDb
Journey Tracker: Another run tracker. GPS. Tried it once.
Messaging: Never used.
Music: ???
MySpace: Never used.
QuickOffice: Haven’t set up yet.
Shazam: Tried it, but “upgraded” to Soundhound.
Twidroid: Used a few times. Prefer the regular app or Tweetdeck.
Urban Dictionary
Voice Control: ???
Yelp: Used once or twice
I’m a little confused as to why everyone is recommending that I rely on public unsecured wi-fi to use my broadband-capable, $70/month smartphone. Why am I paying for my own connection if I’m still supposed to look for a McDonald’s every time I want to get online? I could do that with my iPod Touch for free.
Also, there’s no wi-fi in my car when it’s going down the highway (don’t pop a stitch, I’m talking about when I’m a passenger), and that’s when I use it the most.
Yes, but several months ago, and I’ve had a normal bill in the interim.
I haven’t used that feature yet, but it’s one of the reasons I got the phone—as an Internet backup for home.
(she) Yes, of course. My home network is firewalled and passworded. Besides, I live in the middle of Buttfuck, Nowhere, so it seems unlikely that somebody’s going to sit in a car out on the road, in full view of my house where there’s pretty much no traffic, to steal my bandwidth.
Again, why? (And what about when I’m not near wi-fi, like in the car?) Why would I pay $70 month to NOT use the connection?
For one thing, the wifi connection is probably at least 5 times faster than your “broadband-capable smartphone”.
I dunno, the broadband seems fast enough for me. I don’t need blazing fast; I’m not in so much of a rush that a few seconds waiting for a page to load is going to kill me.
But you say that’s one thing; are there others? Why do people buy these phones and their associated data plans if using the broadband is such a crock?
(Why the quotation marks? They seem intended to indicate sarcasm more than the words I used.)
Err, I was agreeing with you that it makes more sense to use 3G when away from home.
Almost all of the posters here, when mentioning wi-fi, are talking about using your phone to access your own secure, residential internet access over a wi-fi connection that you’ve established in your home using a wireless router. This situation may not apply to you, and it sounds like it’s not applicable.
If you are currently connecting to your home internet using a laptop and a wireless router, however, it offers a few advantages. One is that it’s totally safe and secure, to the degree that anything you do on that connection would be. Secondly, it’s fast; considerably faster than a 3G connection when downloading a lot of data like new apps. Third, it costs you nothing in data charges. This is, again, only a concern if you’re using a lot of data. It sounds like you’re not. You may find these advantages to be not worthwhile, and that’s fine based on your stated usage patterns.
While you are also able to use wi-fi at your neighborhood Starbucks, many of the advantages above are nullified, and there’s potentially a lot of additional expense. I don’t think anyone’s advocating that you go accessing miscellaneous wi-fi networks unless you have compelling reason to do so.
The quotation marks should probably have just been on “broadband”.
Oh, I wish someone had made that clear.
No, of course I’m not using my phone for Internet/data at home. I’m self-employed and sit right here at this workhorse of a desktop computer pretty much all day, every day. There’s no reason for me to use a dinky screen and keyboard to go online when I have a full-size keyboard and a dedicated monitor (one of four) just for e-mail and Internet. I have satellite Internet at home, and yes I know that it’s not as blazing fast as 3G, but it’s plenty fast for my purposes, and I have 17GB for downloads and 5GB for uploads monthly, plenty more than I will ever need for the foreseeable future. And my wireless router does fine when I want to use my netbook or laptop on the couch. The phone is only for when I’m out and about.
So I guess we’re back to figuring out how I topped 5GB on the phone. No call back from US Cellular yet.
I had a similar thing happen to me on my Nexus 1… about 3Gb downloaded in a month. It turned out it was the native Android email application (not the GMail app) that was having trouble syncing email with the email server. Basically what was happening is that it was having trouble recognizing what emails had already been downloaded (since I leave all email on the server so other clients can sync against it), and every time it synced against the email server for new email it was re-downloading all the email. In the email app under Account Settings you can set ‘Inbox Check Frequency’ which I turned to ‘Never’ since it is not my primary email account and now I sync it manually once a day. This solution may not be an option for you though.
I found the problem by downloading the free version of the Phone Usage app.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jupiterapps.phoneusage&feature=search_result
It basically tells you what apps are using data on 3G, WiFi, calls, etc. Once you download it, it takes a few days to build up the app usage data to graph out. So, download and install it, wait a few days, and it will tell you exactly what is using bandwidth.
Good luck.
So how many of the apps you listed did you download using 3GS?
First and foremost, uninstall all those crappy apps that you never use or are redundant. Uninstall Shazam, all but one of your Twitter apps, MySpace, Urban Dictionary the GPS trackers that you aren’t using, IMDB, Dictionary.com, Books, Best Buy, Adobe Reader and Backgrounds. Apps are sometimes poorly written and leak data. There’s really no justifiable reason to keep apps that you never use and redundant apps. If you’ve got 3 Twitter apps all three are going to be constantly updating your account. The GPS tracker apps might be wasting a ton of data pulling in maps constantly in the background, stick with just one. All those website apps are better off as bookmarks. If you need to check a dictionary, IMDB or Best Buy just run your web browser and load their website. You don’t know how shitty the Urban Dictionary app might be and it doesn’t do anything the website doesn’t. Ditto with the Find a Starbucks app, Google Maps is an excellent app and does this fine. No need for another possibly shitty app. Lose Winamp, The Weather Channel and MSNBC.com. Winamp might be worth keeping if you really like it, but if you don’t listen to a lot of music stick with the stock apps. TWC and MSNBC are better as bookmarks than apps.
Not only do these things use extra data and take up space, they probably are burning your battery life faster than you want.
Next, go to Marketplace and click your menu button. Click “My Apps” and make sure everything is updated. Keeping apps up to date is important since good app developers are constantly fixing security holes, battery drain and data leaks. There might be a corrupt app that you have install that needs updating and will fix the issue.
There’s a chance that your data issue was a fluke of their network and/or a bizarre state for a program you installed. Might never happen again and you might never be able to locate it. Uninstalling useless apps and keeping used ones up to date is going to be the safest way to protect it happening in the future.
Incidentally, I don’t use Dropbox but of all the apps that’s the one that seems most likely to spin a lot of data if it’s constantly syncing files with cloud storage, the camera app might be similar depending on if you have your photos somehow synced with the cloud via facebook or something else.
I have a friend who has changed the “Email Delivery” settings on his email app to “synch over WIFI only” specifically to avoid any data charges related to email. Until I read your comment I thought he was just paranoid.
Mine is already set for Never. As I’ve mentioned, I use the phone rarely enough that I know I don’t need it to be constantly updating the e-mail. When I need to see my e-mail, I do it manually.
Hm. I have 3G Watchdog, but that doesn’t identify apps. I should probably try this one instead.
This morning the watchdog tells me it’s used 1.39 MB since Monday.
Do you mean as opposed to wi-fi? All of them. But as I’ve explained, that was all shortly after I got the phone in January, and I’ve had a normal bill since January.
I’ll take this under advisement, but I do use and enjoy some of these “crappy apps.” I know I should uninstall the redundant ones. Still plan to get around to testing the run trackers some more and pick one. (And I think they track only during a tracked run. Will investigate.) I plan to use the phone for my music player on runs so I don’t have to carry it and the iPod Touch, and I’m not happy with the native player, hence Winamp (still playing with it). We’re heavy Starbucks users when we travel, and the app gives me hours, which I don’t think Google Maps will do. And I love Aldiko (eBook reader) and don’t see how it could be using data when I’m just reading a book and not downloading one.
For things like The Weather Channel and MSNBC.com, I find the mobile versions much easier to use.
I do run updates as they come up.
As far as I know, I don’t have anything synced*. I do hope to use Dropbox/Evernote in relation to my business; I just need to set them up and learn how to use them. Even so, I wouldn’t be using them often, only when I’m away from home and need to handle work files, and 99% of the time when I’m in work mode I’m right here in this chair.
Second, some of those imported numbers are now somehow associated with Facebook and Gmail. Again, WTH? They were just numbers in my old non-smartphone, I don’t have those people in my Facebook or Gmail accounts (most of them aren’t even on FB!), and I don’t want them connected to FB/GM at all. They’re just numbers in my phone. And when I went to update one of the numbers the other day, it told me I couldn’t edit the contact, nor delete it and create a new one. Come on!! Obviously there’s some obscure thing I’m not grokking. I’d hate to have to wipe them all (how?) and put them all in again by hand (the ones I’ve added manually don’t sem to have this problem). I’ve been meaning to call tech support or go in to the local office sometime and ask for help, but I haven’t had the time/inclination.
That might be a good reason to check your bill for roaming charges. If you don’t have any (and you may not be doing any roaming or your contract may include domestic roaming for no extra charge), great! Otherwise, that’s something you may be able to minimize.
This would probably be totally unrelated to your data overage issue.
I bought the phone in town, 5 miles away, and I have a national plan with no roaming for voice or data. I double-checked this.
Since I started monitoring my bandwidth, everything looks normal. I have also (usually) been using the task killer when I put the phone back in my pocket/purse for a while, or when I plug it in at home. Ditto for allowing background data use. I have a couple of days showing zero data usage.
I stopped in at the “shop” on Saturday to see about some checks they’d wanted to do earlier in the week when I didn’t have time to do them, but the service counter was closed. Will try again later this week.
Just FYI, that’s not necessary and can even drain more battery that if you didn’t use it. Apps in the background are there for a reason, either finishing up something or in a suspended state just waiting for you to come back to it. Killing apps usually just makes the system do more work by reloading the app. (longer explanation)