Posting this for some helpful love to those without a unlimited data plan. Like alot of you, I only have 4gb of data and well sometimes that isnt quite enough. Onavo extend, a FREE app built for ICS creates a VPN through amazon servers that compresses your data saving you alot.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onavo.android.onavoics&hl=en
I have found this app to be extremely effective, it has saved me approx. 50% of my normal data this month, so instead of nearing 4gb, I never touched 2, hit 1.92GB
This will vary person to person, my usage I consider average, web browsing, pandora, some youtube, facebook, angry birds(adds) (note that certain websites, and google play services will bypas the VPN for security reasons)
I have also found for the even more data conscious that chrome uses the least out of all browsers to load a website. (disable flash and theres even more to save)
I use this and it's very effective. The only problem is that my connection got slower.
I actually noticed the opposite, the connection was faster for me, (more noticable on 3g, 4g little difference) yes the PING has increased a significant amount, likely double, but speed itself stays the same or improves in my case. But then again why complain when I can pull 2.5meg on 3g, and over 25 on 4g.
it is great saves data , and i have found it to be slower , like using opera browser instead of stock browser which is not a problem. i do worry about security though. How long till one of these servers is hacked . maybe i am just paranoid
Lol security? for me it isnt a problem, not much their gona see but my porn sites. But if you do online banking, just turn it off when you do that.
Related
Ive got a few question about my new htc hero so here they are.
1: What apps use internet in the background and does the weather widjet use internet.
2: Do you think 500mb is enough to download lots of apps and surf the web or should i be careful.
3: And if these apps use internet in the background is there a way to turn it off so it only connects to wifi.
Most of the default apps use background internet, email, stocks, weather etc,
Currently I am on 500mb so far but since im at home a lot of the time I mainly use wifi so I'm probably not the best person to answer this question.
If you disable the Mobile Network option, either from the end call menu or the HTC widget, this will stop all data traffic on your phone but you can still use SMS and make and recieve calls. Therefore if you leave wifi enabled and this disabled, they should only use wifi.
Thanks i just don't want to go over the limit as the charges are horrific £2 for 1 mb so it a big deal as to my second question i would love to here the opninion from someone who travels around lots and uses the internet out and about.
Another question just sprung to mind does the gps require internet and does it use it or is it an actual GPS?
Its an actual GPS chips set... will use the internet to down load data to help it fix a position quickly... essentially data telling the handset where the satellites are.
Also will use the position itself initially using the cell towers for a rough location, then update as soon as the GPS gets a fix.
TBH, the Hero gets a satellite fix faster than any handset I've used before.
So the GPS does use data but hardly any?
Uses data, and yes, hardly any. If you turn off data it will just take longer to get a fix while it searches for satellites.
Thanks i could still use the opinion of someone who uses there phone lots for internet and things like that as im still not sure weather 500mb is enough.
I've still to get an out of memory error.
The Hero has plenty of RAM, all handled very well by the OS.
Search the Hero forum, see if you can find anyone saying their Hero keeps running out of RAM
And RAM is not the same as storage... the Hero has enough RAM for running apps and IMHO enough memory to store applications.
blood9656 said:
Ive got a few question about my new htc hero so here they are.
1: What apps use internet in the background and does the weather widjet use internet.
2: Do you think 500mb is enough to download lots of apps and surf the web or should i be careful.
3: And if these apps use internet in the background is there a way to turn it off so it only connects to wifi.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To answer to your questions,:
1. app that use internet are internet browser, weather widget, gmaiul, the htc mail app, peep .... .depends also what soft you downloaded from the market.
2.The 500mb you're refering too here is the ROM. Yes it is sufficient for lots of applications. If you really want, you can also download application to your memory card using a2sd.Check the modaco site or paul's thread of his custom rom. As for RAM, the hero comes with 288mb. this is what makes the phone lag or not. If you have a lot of apps running in the background, it obviously will eat a lot of RAM but don't worry cause taskiller is here to save the day and good news is that a new firmware will be out soon that fix this. (check the youtube vid)
3.Well if you don't want applications to use the internet, you can configure them not to update and just do so manually. Mobile Network and wifi cannot connect at the same time. so once connected to wifi, mobile network will be temporarily off.
Hope that helped!!
Believe me, you don't need a task killer or task management app.
Android will manage your RAM very effectively given the chance.
joemax said:
Believe me, you don't need a task killer or task management app.
Android will manage your RAM very effectively given the chance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hey joemax,
In fact android manages it very well indeed but i sometimes feel the need of more ram. Even with rss feeds, facebook application, mails n stuff, browser open, the phone responds good, no doubt abt that but if you try to load a game such as devilry huntress ( LOL )on top of that, you'll find all the jewels( or whatever it's called) falling in slow motion.
But yes, the os in majority of the cases takes care of it . I just mentioned it to give a full answer to our friend here .
Cheers/
Fair enough.
Just I have not seen any slow downs since logging out of Twitter, stoping Peeps updates and started using Twidroid.
Then, I don't play games on my Hero apart from maybe Teeter or Labyrinth now and again.
Thanks agian well i just upgraded and got 1gb monthly data so i should be fine now.
Ahhhh... you meant 500MB data plan
Sorry I thought you were on about handset memory.
Glad you upgraded... I have an unlimited plan so do not worry about such things
Well i see your with orange and if you look at their unlimited* plan it has that star well that means fair use policy and the fair use policy is so that you can't over use it,
so im affraid to say that its a 500mb of data limit.
Depends on when you signed up for it
I started my unlimited plan when the Touch Diamond came out. It was only available while they had initial stocks of the handset, then rapidly withdrawn.
By using my Nokia N82 and then N85 (TD went back as its battery was useless and syncing to OS X painful) as a tethered modem (via Bluetooth), I easily racked up over a Gig of data on multiple months, max one month was 1.9GB.
Used instead of lousy hotel wired internet connect. HSPDA was sooo much faster.
NEVER had an issue with a limit or usage.
This may of course be dependant on my history with Orange, I've been with them for over 8 years and I use my handset for work mainly, thus I have very large bills compared to the average user.
Gives me a very high category for upgrades and a very large point score with Orange premiere. On an 18 month contract I usually upgrade at around 9-10 months with no fee and no questions.
well thats pretty good but then you have been with them for 8 years.
I am that old yes
Its a pitty ive been with 02 for 4 years but i don't think they count payg the same as contracts when trying to get special tarrifs and rewards.
Question
have you had any problems with going over the 500mb limit?
if not
why do i keep going over it
My service got renewed on the 22nd which is my billing date and just today i found out my 500mb is finished i phoned orange customer help line for help but yea very helpful they was lol.
I just normally use it for downloading my email from hotmail and microsoft exchange maybe use google maps once in a while and sometimes browse on facebook but thats it?
PS
is there a software in which i can track my usage of my internet?!
Thanks for reading
If you are on Orange, the 'my account' keeps track of your 500MB, but how you went over it just doing that I have no idea
Try net counter its available for free on the market.
I am also with orange, but tend to use wifi if for web unless not available. hardly use any of your 500mb that way.
I use 3G Watchdog to monitor my internet use as it has a nice indicator for your notification area which changes colour to warn you when your getting near you limit.
egress said:
Try net counter its available for free on the market.
I am also with orange, but tend to use wifi if for web unless not available. hardly use any of your 500mb that way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mean when you are at homebase, or out and about? I've only ever had one occasion when BT Open has come up while I've been out and they wanted £7..... Do you find it other ways? I kind of figure if I'm at home I'd use the PC anyway?
I've found 3G Watchdog to be the best data counter, it's surprising how much data you get through!
No problems here - I get renewed on the 23rd and have used 200MB so far, but that's down to me downloading podcasts in Listen - now I've changed the settings so it only does that over wi-fi.
I don't sync to exchange though - only use gmail for email - maybe that has a high usage pattern?
Dave
I've just finished my first month and only used about 300mb surprisingly, and I haven't been going out of my way to conserve downloads by any means.
[I sync with exchange/gmail/dogcatch podcasts etc]
Most of my usage occurs at home, when there's wifi around which would make a big impact.
bmnaccounts said:
I've just finished my first month and only used about 300mb surprisingly, and I haven't been going out of my way to conserve downloads by any means.
[I sync with exchange/gmail/dogcatch podcasts etc]
Most of my usage occurs at home, when there's wifi around which would make a big impact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no need to worry about data if your on T-mob
I'm actually on orange (500mb plan) - this is just a bugmenot login
Okay, in month one i used 450mb, this month 130mb with couple of days left before statement. The differnece in useage for me is Peep. In month one i used peep, this month i took htc orange new rom and have not configured peep. browsed about the same in each month - a little.
So, I logged onto my Vodafone account and checked my usage and it seems that at regular intervals throughout the last few days I've been downloading stuff, always at around roughly 3000.00 KB (more like 2800/2900). These amounts have been downloaded literally 65 times between Wednesday morning and this afternoon (Saturday).
Now, it's a new phone and I'm all giddy about it with new phone syndrome so I have been downloading stuff and it looks like I've downloaded about 195 MB, plus a bit more here and there. So I'll round it up to 250 mb. I only have a 500mb monthly allowance.
So, can anyone tell me, why these amounts show like this? I have downloaded some games and stuff - do the amounts of MB they are worth get reported in small packets like this? Also, does just going on the Marketplace use up a lot of MB? In fact, can anyone tell me what things to look out for in terms of default settings that I can turn off to help make sure I don't go over my 500 mb limit?
I'm especially worried because of all the crappy bloatware that I can't seem to remove no matter how many times i dump something into the bin. Do any of these programs auto connect to the internet secretly?
Thanks for your help!
Am assuming this is your first smart phone.
Yes lots of programmes use the internet in the background, google does it to sync your account, facebook/twitter does it for updates, Email apps do it to check to see if you have email/ the weather app does it every so many hours to update the weather etc etc.
And yes going onto the market does use some data as your downloading the latest information (like what new apps are their etc) every time you go on.
My advice is use wifi every time chance you get, if your checking you allowance often you should be ok as after the whole new phone things die down, you should be ok, though if your ever running low on your allowance, turning auto sync and background data off stops programmes connecting to the internet in the background, your weather wont update unless you do it manually but nothing will eat your data unless you tell it too.
and the thing using your internet 65 times, will be google syncing your account, everytime you get a gmail/ or add a new contact etc it syncs so its all backed up into the google cloud (which btw when you get your next smartphone makes life dead easy, type your email and password and presto, you get all your contacts/email/ apps all downloaded onto your new device along with passwords of past wifi networks and assuming your next device is one running android 4.0 or newer, you'l get all your bookmarks too.
I would recommend droidstats from the market. It will monitor your 3g usage and the pro version will tell you which Apps have been using it. I'm paranoid about getting unwelcome 3g bills so find it invaluable.
Thanks for the advice, it's very helpful!
It's not actually my first smart phone - I had the HTC Touch pro 2 which was a win mo 6.5 based phone but it was very different to android - there was none of this auto syncing. All it did was check my email account every 2 hours and push it to my phone. Android seems to do way more things on it's own. I'm going to switch off all that syncing now and just check my emails myself - bit annoying but otherwise I'll hit my monthly limit way too early.
I also recommend "3g watch dog" free from the market. You can set a limit on there and that way you can always check your data from your notification bar with 1 click.
Nice easy quick reliable
In my experience not one of them including 3G watchdog are totally accurate,ive tried them all and they are all incorrect and do not 100% properly calculate your data usage, funnily enough the only one that came even close to calculating properly is part of the ZD Box app, i don't even use though as it's still not accurate, i am hoping with the ICS update the built in program will properly calculate data usage because the ones available right now (including pro versions) are way off the mark, until then ill have to make so with texting my carrier to get my data usage.
Hi, I have a non-rooted RAZR XT910 (OTA Updated just a few days back to 65.1.40.XT910.AsiaRetail.en.03).
I absolutely love this phone and am eagerly waiting for some functional ICS goodness but I have been facing some issues with high consumption of data.
I have Onavo installed to monitor data usage (Installed it a little too late, relying on my service provider's text notifications).
The two most data hungry applications in the "App Watch" section are "Android OS + others" & the official Facebook application.
Three days in to my billing cycle, "Android OS + others" has already hit 51.7 MB and Facebook is up to 19.4 MB. I haven't opened the Facebook application even once in the last week, so whatever data it has pulled is background data. My OTA updates are allowed only over WiFi. And I have also disabled the "Back up my data" option, under Privacy > Settings but that doesn't seem to have helped much, if at all. Neither did the OTA update.
Before Onavo reset the data usage meter for the new billing cycle, "Android OS + others" had used about 150 MB of data in a week and Facebook about 40 MB.
Can anyone help me out here? I need to reduce this phantom data usage. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I have that too. I'm running rooted 167.19. first I suspected the gallery app with its motocast service so I freezed this app for one day, but it didn't helped. every now and then these few app processes (which are sadly only listed in one package so I don't exactly know which one causes the traffic) upload about 2mb somewhere. sometimes they also upload 2x 2mb, pause for some time and then there is an other upload of 2mb a few hours later. i'm monitoring traffic with droidstats and checking my consumed traffic online from my providers website.
I installed driodwall for blocking android-os service and these others from up- and downloading via 3g, just allowing wifi. this was also before the update with 651.73.30. full wipe already done - does not help ... still testing if blocking helps
This sucks but good to know I'm not the only one facing this problem with the RAZR.
I did start looking at other forums and seems like the problem is not only with the RAZR. There are other handsets which face a similar issue. Let us hope we get some insight into this problem.
i read about that defy users experience this high consumption too.
since I blocked android-OS (and all of these other processes in this package) from 3G network my traffic for today for corporate mail + 2x imap idle accounts + weather update is about 800KB. yesterday I had about 15MB for doing the same - nothing.
that helps for now but I still don't know which process exactly uploads so much stuff ... and why..
Just an update. Things still the same. VERY heavy data usage. Facebook is upto a 100MB even though I barely ever open the application now. Android OS + Others is around 200 Megs too. 300MB of my monthly 500MB data allowed is gone. Just like that. Any suggestions anyone?
That could be traffic originating from outside. Try connecting to another network and see if you see the same behavior.
With my Android, when I connect to my home WiFi network, "OS Services" take up about 2kb an hour while idle. But, when I connect to my work WiFi network, it takes up about 2mb every hour while idle. I am pretty sure my work network is doing a lot of snooping (in the name of security).
Facebook is understandable though don't ya think? It syncs all your contacts and birthdays and thongs of that nature.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda premium
ali87va said:
Facebook is understandable though don't ya think? It syncs all your contacts and birthdays and thongs of that nature.
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Of which nature are said thongs... Autocorrect for the win!
Sent from my DROID RAZR using xda premium
Solutions?
No solutions or updates so far? Same problem here: Sony Xperia S, Android 2.3.7 (Build .75), 500MB dataplan and the OS takes 300 of that! I already took some precautions like turning of the backup, I've logged out of Facebook and removed my Hotmail app. And I installed JuiceDefender Plus which handles my connections, but no results whatsoever: Android OS still uses 5-10MB/day...
Any help would be very, very welcome.
Find the option for "Sync over wifi only" inside of settings, that should save a bunch. I've never had that problem, infact I have the opposite issue. I use maybe 100MB of my 500MB plan. Sometimes I even TRY to use up my data for the month and fail. I use the Facebook app maybe 10 times a month, most of my data goes towards sports scores, twitter, and reddit. As for the Android OS, the bloatware included on the phone are considered part of the "Android OS" so it's not really the OS using all the data. Open up the task manager and set all the bloatware to auto-end, might help a bit
Just posted in another thread about this. I some how used 25 megabytes on the way to and from work today with the phone in my pocket. 15 minutes each way.
Also accumulated about 280 "free" minutes this weekend between my wife and I. I thought weekends were free. Well I know they are supposed to.
Back to sprint and slow unlimited data as apposed to fast data that's going to break the bank. Just as I was starting to like the phone.
Call them tonight to tell them I was switching. Glad I'm withiny fourteen days.
Hey, didn't notice the replies till now. But do you have any task managers auto ending apps?
That was what caused high data consumption in my case. A self starting task when killed, may restart itself and it's data consumption process from 0.
Once I disabled that, data consumption fell to normal ranges. Hope this helps. Let us know how it goes.
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium
A common question I assume, but no good answers showed up on a quick search, everything was ad-hack, not really practical.
Since I got my SIII I've seen a large rise is the amount of data I'm using, also all of which is listed as Android OS and if I drill down it is all background. Is there a way to easily track down what is using so much background data? In my case the top app is Play with 51mb, but the Android OS background is at 2.8GB in 10 days, which is insane. Thus I'm looking for some way to break down what is using all of this data.
Thanks,
ERIC
settings/data usage shows a breakdown, or there are several apps on the market. Might be a Samsung account backing up data or Google, or drop box, piccassa web album, all these could use a fair bit, make sure they only synch on Wi-Fi, or ditch them, even better
My problem is that the it only shows up as Android OS and then if I select it as background data (none is foreground), all of that does not help as I still do not know the cause, I have setup blocks in Droidwall so that many Apps can only run on Wifi and according to the per app break down that's all fine (none exceed 50 or so megs) the problem is with background data usage by Android. I do have Kaspersky install, so I do not think it is coming from Malware, but .... starting to wonder if maybe a reinstall is in order, that's such a pain.
Current breakdown (1 day all in K unless stated otherwise):
Android OS: 238megs
Google Play Store: 1.48megs
Email: 774
GoogelServices: 152
Gmail: 133
Maps: 124
Google+ 80
Go Weather ex 70
...
so basically no app is using anything yet I've used 238megs.
Maybe it is a Google backup then, do you use that?
Thanks will try that (just disabled google sync),
I've tracked down it is a matter of large uploads normally 30 to 250 megs that occur in the over night hours (between 1Am and 6AM), but do not know the cause will see if that is it. Also odd that as the phone is connected to a Wifi connection during those hours, so it should not use any mobile data, also as if it is using mobile data when it should be using wifi, will see if I can verify whether this is the case or not tonight. I have 3g watchdog installed now so I can see if the traffic is wifi or cell.
ERIC
Maybe it is a Google backup then, do you use that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep that was the problem, moving massive amounts of data and not using the Wifi connection, turned it off and poof all gone.
ERIC
Sorry to bring this back from the dead but what did you disable exactly?
I think disabling the google backup would help, coz enabling it makes app data back up to google servers. If there's an app with a lot of app data, it can eat up your data bandwidth.
Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman
Hi,
I am using KITKAT ported by Legacy Xperia. Me too facing same problem. From starting, I have not enabled data backup. Still, for 10 days, Android OS consumed 9.5MB data. Look high side for me as I have only 500MB data / month.
Kindly let me know the solution.
egandt said:
A common question I assume, but no good answers showed up on a quick search, everything was ad-hack, not really practical.
Since I got my SIII I've seen a large rise is the amount of data I'm using, also all of which is listed as Android OS and if I drill down it is all background. Is there a way to easily track down what is using so much background data? In my case the top app is Play with 51mb, but the Android OS background is at 2.8GB in 10 days, which is insane. Thus I'm looking for some way to break down what is using all of this data.
Thanks,
ERIC
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I faced the same problem, issue was somewhat with auto backup of data, sync of app data & people details in google account,
BUT the main culprit in my case was uTorrent application.
Even though there was no torrent added to it, i didn't even opened it,
it was using 1GB data daily on WiFi and in data usage it was coming under Android OS usage. I uninstalled it, everything went back to normal.
So try to look for such apps which eat up your data in background, it may not be an error of android OS as such.
Hope this helps, Press THANKS if it did help you
Enjoy