My mom has always had trouble with computers, and so a couple of weeks ago, we went and got an Android tablet for her, in the hopes that it would be a simpler way to get e-mail. The tablet is associated with my sister’s family cell plan, which means that it draws from the same pool of cellular data as the rest of her family, so we want to keep the data usage low. Well, that’s not a problem: She literally does nothing online but e-mail, and so I set a very modest data limit on the device (200 MB), which should still have been plenty for her needs.
But a few days ago, she called me up and said that she’d hit the limit. This leaves two questions. First, is what was using the data, since text e-mails certainly weren’t doing it. All I can determine from the settings is that it was foreground processes by the web browser. My best guess is that it was all from ads served up by her e-mail providers (Juno and Netzero, and yes, we know that they’re terrible, and we’re trying to migrate her from those to Gmail).
But that still doesn’t answer the second question. I can also see when the data usage happened, and when it happened, she was at my apartment, connected to my WiFi. At the time, I looked at her screen to confirm, and it showed the connected WiFi symbol, and the 4G symbol was grayed out.
So, why would the tablet have been using 4G anyway, and is there anything we can do to tell it that we really mean it that it shouldn’t do that?
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’d already tried the Adblock Browser. The Juno and Netzero pages don’t work with it. Nor does any non-browser e-mail client work with them.
200 MB is insanely little data for modern web pages, which are filled with all sorts of background crap. You can see some of this by doing a right-click/save as for the web page, downloading all the files to recreate the page off-line, and look at some of the files. For instance, I went to the Netzero home page, saved that, and see that it downloaded 1.54 MB of background crap, including 21 javascript files weighing 896 KB. Is the an app that she could use for her e-mail instead of using a web-based interface?
Depends on the Android version, but if you go to Settings -> Data Usage -> Cellular Data Usage, it should tell you exactly how much mobile data was used by each app.
And how do you know when the data usage happened?
200MB is very little though. I could imagine a combination of app updates and e-mail could get you there. The e-mail app may have downloaded a few weeks worth of e-mails (or more) when it was first set up.
I already checked that. It was mostly the web browser, foreground (exactly what one would expect from the ads on a web page full of crap). And it also gives a graph of cumulative usage over time, and it’s easy to see where the big jumps are on the graph. Plus the fact that she had it turned off (yes, completely off, not just standby) in between.
My iPhone has a feature in the Cellular Settings called WiFi assist. It says it allows the phone to automatically use cellular data when wifi connectivity is poor. I’m not sure what qualifies as “poor” but if android has a similar feature it might be the culprit.
200MB does go very fast. Where are you seeing ‘when’ the data usage happened? If it’s from the cellular provider’s web site, those times are just approximate as it depends on when the cell towers update the central database.
I agree that 200MB is not very much at all to allow a device.
On all my Android cell phones, I’ve had the option to turn off the mobile data and ONLY use wifi (when available), but I sometimes unintentionally do the following: I’m at a location with an available wifi network and my cell phone can’t log in. I get error messages when I try to check my mail. I then turn the wifi off, which switches the phone to mobile data, and forget to turn it back on when I get to an area with a wifi network I CAN use. I go about doing all sorts of things on my phone before I figure out that the wifi is still turned off and I’m using mobile data. Could she have done something like this? Maybe then she turned on the wifi? Same thing happens if my local wifi is out for a few minutes or doesn’t have network access.
I won’t flog a dead horse about switching to a non-browser-based e-mail service.
Yeah, put into perspective, that is less than 7 MB per day. Even a bare-bones web e-mail interface would have no problem at all eating up that much data if e-mail is checked even just a couple or three times a day.
(ETA: playing with the numbers, that is around 1/2 of one second per day download time at 4G LTE speeds.)
Hijack perhaps, but I often use the “set data limit” with a much lower level than my full monthly quota–perhaps 10meg to start the month. When I’m trying to use the phone off wifi and it complains that I’ve hit my limit, then I’ll raise the limit by another 10 or 20 megs… whatever I think I’ll need to do this thing I’m doing right then.
The few times I’ve gone over my 250mb data on my Android phone, it was because I was using it as a wi-fi hotspot for a laptop. For some reason, hitting the data limit doesn’t stop the hotspot from using data.
I just went to Settings : Data Usage on the device, and it let me turn cell data on or off, told me the amount I’d used so far this month, showed me a graph of my cumulative usage over the month, let me set a limit, and showed what apps had actually used the data. And it even warns that the data it’s showing me is not from the provider, and that they might calculate slightly differently, and so I should leave a safety margin.
As for the size of the limit, I’m under 200 megs, and I’m sure I use e-mail more than she does. Granted, though, that my only e-mail is Gmail, which isn’t serving me up a bunch of ads and other nonsense. We probably could set the limit somewhat higher: I’d have to talk with my sister and find out what limit they’re comfortable with. And worst-case scenario, she can come over to my place or to my sister’s to check her Juno and Netzero on WiFi, like she’d been doing before we got her the tablet, anyway.
Except, of course, for the issue where it seems to be using up data anyway when on the WiFi. That’s the real problem here.
Well, both I and the guy at the Verizon store (who seemed quite competent) tried and couldn’t get it to work, with multiple different apps. I can’t recall exactly what the error messages were-- I’ll write it down if I try again.
If Android does have such a feature, then I have no idea where to find it, it should default to off, and it should be giving an indication that it’s using the 4G instead of graying it out.
This is taking things in a different direction, and I might not understand the situation completely, but are you saying that she does NOT have wifi at her residence? Again, 200 MB seems sort of low if she is using a browser-based service and is always on mobile data (except when she is at your house).
I know this doesn’t explain why the mobile data usage is so high when she’s at your house. Maybe turn off her mobile data when she comes over to see if the tablet is actually using your wifi when she’s there?
however, your method of gauging the amount of bandwidth used by a site isn’t going to be very accurate as most modern servers will be compressing files before sending them to the client. Those 900 KBs worth of js, for example, is likely to have been sent over the wire for 25% or less of that.
On my Samsung Android phone, there’s a similar sounding feature under Wi-Fi -> Advanced -> Smart network switch. I’ve never used it, but the description says “Switch to using a mobile network to access the Internet when your Wi-Fi Internet connection becomes unstable.” Not sure what they mean by “unstable” though.
That I’ve seen, your average elderly person is regularly receiving (and forwarding) a wide variety of email chains with thousands of images and animations embedded in them.
You might want to check what sorts of things she’s getting in her email.
Now you have me curious, so I created a Netzero free mail account for testing. I was able to set up my Android phone to use the account with POP3 using the default mail app (Gmail). Note that there is a Netzero account setting to enable POP mail access (Options -> General).
I realize this does not solve your root issue, but getting your mum off the browser is worthwhile in any case.
For netzero this worked for andoid exchange app, did not try in google mail app
[ol]
[li]Tap the Menu or Home icon on the phone.[/li][li]Tap the Settings icon, and select Accounts.[/li][li]Tap Add Account, then select Email.[/li][li]Type your NetZero email address and password and tap Next.[/li][li]Now tap on Manual setup.[/li][li]Under Account type select POP3 as the server type.[/li][li]Incoming server settings screen will be displayed.[/li][li]Type: pop.NetZero.com for POP3 and for Port Number type: 995.[/li][li]Select SSL for Security type.[/li][li]Select Never for Delete email from server.[/li][li]Tap on Next.[/li][li]Outgoing server settings screen will be displayed.[/li][li]Type: smtp.NetZero.com and for Port Number type: 465[/li][li]Select SSL for Security type.[/li][li]Select the Require Sign-in checkbox.[/li][li]Choose how frequently you’d like to check your email and tap Next.[/li][li]Once the account is set up you will get a message Your account is set up, and email is on its way![/li][li]Type the name that you want to be displayed for outgoing message under “Your name(displayed on outgoing messages)”.[/li][li]Tap Done.[/li][li]Wait for email to sync. Once it is completed, the email will be set up.[/li][/ol]
For juno i couldnt test, too much trouble to make an account but they publish this
[ul]
[li]1 Go to your mail app, choose settings and add a new email account.[/li]
[li]2[/li]
[li]3 Choose pop3.[/li]
[li]4 Please enter your full Juno email address and password. Then select “Manual Setup”.[/li]
[li]5 Enter the following information in the incoming settings screen:[/li]
[li]Username: email[/li][li]Password: uw email-wachtwoord[/li][li]Incoming server: pop.juno.com[/li][li]Incoming poort: 995[/li][li]Security type: ssl[/li]
[li]Choose ‘next’.[/li]
[li]6 Enter the following information in the outgoing settings screen:[/li]
[li]Outgoing server: smtp.juno.com[/li][li]Outgoing port: 465[/li][li]Security type: ssl[/li][li]Authorisation required: yes[/li][li]Username: email[/li][li]Password: your email-password[/li]
[li]Choose ‘next’.[/li]
[li]7 Enter your preferences in the following screen and give the account a personal name. Congratulations, your e-mail has been set[/li][/ul]
Settings
WIFI
Advanced (3 dots for me)
Avoid Poor Connections (uncheck it, or it bounces to 4g if it thinks the router sucks)
