Smart phone data usage

My first few smart phone carrier plans had unlimited data, so I never really paid attention to how much I used, or what was driving that usage. But I recently switched carriers, and signed up for a 2 GB/month plan, and was surprised and mildly perturbed when I ran out, 5 days short of the month’s end.

And I also realized that I’m fuzzy on the whole concept, of what constitutes data traffic on a cell phone network.

So help me out here…what am I doing, and how can I economize?

My typical phone usage (other than actually making phone calls):

text messages (which I assume use tiny amounts of data)
checking email. rarely, sending email
checking Facebook, Yelp, IMDB, etc.
checking baseball scores. Getting pushed alerts on score changes on favorite teams
I use my phone as a radio, streaming NPR through iTunes Radio on my way to work. I assume this counts as data? As would Pandora, which I haven’t used much?
I upload pictures primarily by plugging my phone into my Mac at home. I assume this doesn’t use any data?
Looking at Maps for traffic problems. Occasionally, getting turn-by-turn directions.

The streaming radio is what’s eating your data.

Text messages are probably not on the data plan. I say probably because lots of people use apps like WhatsApp and call them text messaging. Those app use data. But as you say unless you are sending pictures with your messages they don’t consume very much data.

Listing to streaming music is probably the main user of data in what you have listed.

Texts don’t count as data. They use a wireless carrier subchannel that was repurposed to bring SMS to the world. Another example of a profit stream appearing from (literally) thin air.

“A long distance call is a costless byproduct of the national telephone system.” - Harry Newton.

We had a 2GB shared plan because that was the only way big red would write the contract. We used about 100M a month, on a busy month. I finally got it reduced to 250MB shared (a savings of $40 a month; 100MB of overage would cost us $15) and we bump into the upper third about every other month. There’s this thing called why-fy, you see… :slight_smile:

Not usually included in data

Not usually included in data (and would be a vanishingly small part if they did)

Does count against your data allotment. Uses very little though.

Does count against your data allotment. Uses very little though.

ETA: Note that if “etc.” includes video streaming like Youtube, this will use a ton of data.

Does count against your data allotment. Uses very little though.

Does count against your data allotment. Uses tons of data. This is your problem.

Correct. Not part of your data allotment.

Does count against your data allotment. Uses very little though.

Streaming music is somewhere between 5 and 25 K bytes/sec.

We seem to have achieved consensus. :slight_smile: And I believe there was a day where I left the streaming radio app running all day, which is probably what pushed me over my allotment for the month.

I assume that hitting the stop button on the player stops the data stream?

So if I’m browsing Facebook, I’m good. If I notice that somebody has posted a cute cat video and I click on it, the meter is running?

I’ve been wondering how much data the apps, such as Facebook, use when they’re running in background mode? Or do they only use data when I’m actively using them?

I would look for more WiFi hot spots and use those rather than your internal data plan.

I was surprised to see that Facebook ate 2.5 GB of my 10 GB data plan last month. Tethering a laptop and tablet consumed another 2.5 GB.

I’m not exactly a heavy user of Facebook, but when every dang video self-loads and self-starts, there’s almost enough data on the move to consider Facebook as a streaming video service.

We were traveling cross-country, through some pretty desolate and unpopulated areas, so finding free Wifi was impractical. Not to mention, LTE and 4G work while the car is moving at 70 MPH.

Um, okay.

Some of us can travel without any need to continually check our Facebook page. The odd meal or piss break at a hot spot should be plenty… but I speak as part of the population that doesn’t have the DTs when we’re disconnected from the net for an hour or two. Nonrepresentational sample.

It may cache some or all of the video, so that’s not a guarantee that it won’t continue to load data. Check you settings to see if you can configure that.

My carrier (Verizon) shows data usage by time and date, but doesn’t give much clue as to the application involved. But I do see that the heavy usage occurs right during my commute (morning and evening) when I’m streaming NPR.

But I also see 20 MB spikes in the middle of the night, like 4:00 AM. What’s going on there … app updates maybe?

Probably. Unless you’re never in a hot spot, I’d take care to disable data usage for such things. It’s a single option to update only on wifi. I believe you can set up maximum download sizes without approval as well, so you don’t get 50MB blobs via the network unless you really want them.

I have a similar problem with one of my kids on my 5-phone family plan. His problem is definitely not having wifi where he works from 7am-3pm.

Verizon bills in six hour intervals. So, if you show 0.50 GB used at 4:07 AM, all that means is that you used those GB between 10:07PM-4:07AM.

I take it you have an Android phone? Mine tracks data for the month, between the billing dates I set for it. It doesn’t tell me dates and times, but does total the usage for each app. My billing starts on the 16th, so my phone is showing totals since then as: YouTube 1.2GB (I was showing Weird Al videos to everybody last week!), Firefox 244MB, Play Store 86.44MB (must be app updates), facebook 51MB, Yahoo Mail 42.83MB, Twitter 25.8MB, Android OS 9.26MB, etc., on down from there.

So that’s a week of data for me, x4 would end up around 6.6GB for the month if I kept up so much YouTube.

Go to Settings > Connections > Data usage. You can set the dates of your cycle and also set a warning for however much data you don’t want to go over. I have my warning set at 4.5GB, because when I get to 5, though I have “unlimited” data, they throttle me to 3G after 5GB and then all my video and music stutters and buffers. Very annoying!

Some other things that eat data (and battery) are push notices, like how often you get email alerts, whether it checks at set intervals or you have alerts come every time an email arrives. Also if you have widgets for apps like facebook or twitter, those use data whenever they update.

Verizon will give you much finer detail of your data usage than 6 hour intervals. This is a subset of my most recent bill. They will even let you download comma separated value file for use in a spread sheet.



06/02/2014 	9:55 AM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	0.1
06/02/2014 	11:49 AM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	74.9
06/02/2014 	11:49 AM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	221.6
06/02/2014 	11:55 AM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	9,232.3
06/02/2014 	1:10 PM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	88.5
06/02/2014 	1:57 PM 	USAGE BASED 4GB 	9.0


I’ve not seen that. How do I get it?