As I understand, several apps and services will "hide" their data usage under Adnroid OS. I need a way to see what exactly is using the data.
Same thing with Play services. I dont want to disable play services all together because then I lose email and find my phone functions, but.. what the heck is it doing in the background?
Surely there is an app or xposed module or something to see whats what, isnt there?
Before you say: I already have firewall installed and data permissions limited for everything I dont want running and also background data is disabled for most apps with the Marshmallow built in settings. (although some apps still report using few kilobytes leaking trough firewall and built in permission manager.. what gives?)
Sync is on, yes, but I only have google and watsapp in there + I checked it by manually syncing everything and comparing used data before and after - it was like 6kb, not megabytes.
Its not necessarily a huge data consumption from those two anyway, but I have a small data plan so every MB counts. And besides, even if my mobile data plan wasnt a problem - I still want to know whats going on.
I remember I had an old nokia with symbian OS and i got all the notifications from email, watsapp and skype and everything worked (albeit slowly becasue it wasnt a fast phone) with no phantom data usage in the background.. now if I disable background access for play services, I lose everything.
Related
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.
According to 3G watchdog pro, as attached...
An entity called "Android System" is downloading something all the time which makes my data plan full to the cap pretty fast. I can't also restrict it to wifi only.
How do I disable that with or without root, (preferably without root since I've been waiting for official ICS update)
My firmware is the latest version.
Thank you so much xda.
To disable it you switch off your phone. It's like asking Why is "windows 7 hogging up all the data. Can I erase it?"
In most cases though "Android System" isnt the culprit. Could be Ads, if you are playing free games and use free apps. If i were you i'd factory reset, only use Watchdog pro and see how it acts. Then install basic apps, like Facebook etc, then see how it acts.
But im most certain that the ads are what you are having problems with
dumraden said:
To disable it you switch off your phone. It's like asking Why is "windows 7 hogging up all the data. Can I erase it?"
In most cases though "Android System" isnt the culprit. Could be Ads, if you are playing free games and use free apps. If i were you i'd factory reset, only use Watchdog pro and see how it acts. Then install basic apps, like Facebook etc, then see how it acts.
But im most certain that the ads are what you are having problems with
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh well, in win7 I can block the system itself from hogging the data, but that's not the point.
My mini just got back from service center, as its second time for the screen to f**ked up completely, the phone came back empty, but mind you, Sony service center in Thailand is really really bad. Anyway, the apps with ads also display separately and that I have blocked their data consumption by restricting them to wifi-only via 3g watchdog. Also, my auto-sync is off all the time.
Back in the time before factory resetting I tried Onavo to block it, didn't work.
The phone is downloading something by itself that I have no idea what they are, so frustrated.
I read an article on the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17431109) that apps that have adds in, drain the battery faster than apps without adds in.
Ive installed AdAway and the adds are gone from the apps, but does this mean the battery use will now drop because the adds aren't there, or will it remain just as high as the apps may still be getting the data for the apps, just not displaying the actual image for the add?
The only reason apps with ads could drain your battery would be because of that extra data that it may require, if your using an app that is online anyway the ads will make no difference at all in real terms.
If your using an offline app then yes it could make a difference.
1)Use 'LBE privacy guard' . From it, you can switch off every apps access to mobile internet, WiFi, or both.
Note: Some free games(very few), will not run if they don't detect internet access. Then you can allow access for such.
2) Use 'super manager' . Go to 'startup ' options and you will find all the crappy games and other programs booting up with your smart phone. Select and Disable those you don't want. They run on the background, hug your data and RAM too.
3) Use titanium backup to freeze bloatware. I've actually created a 'label ' in titanium backup for frozen apps.
If you are a regular flasher, OTA won't work for you. You might as well freeze it to free RAM, background running and data(when attemptingconnecting to server, which will anyway be refused because of modified software)
With the above, I always get more than a day's worth of battery life.
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium
Lucky patcher is a free apps for android to remove Ads on application. Search on Google, apps not available on Google Play.
Warning : it modifies apps, so using it at your own risk. Personally, no problem with it.
There are multiple types of ads. The ones displayed ingame on loading screens are usually no issue.
The most problematic are the Push-Notification ads which run a daemon (background) process which is triggered by almost any action (phone waking up, data connectivity, ...).
These programs use up lots of RAM, data connectivity and thus ultimatively battery.
First time I've read about 'LBE privacy guard, and it looks great. HOWEVER, reading the comments, it seems it gives mayor problems with Jelly Bean ROMs, so beware.
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
I think I can say ... everyone here knows the native google services app, right? Well, this app performs structural operations on the system, plus functionalities. All this, however, in the background, and sometimes (with or without mobile data). In fact, every operation of this app is performed without such data, but, on the other hand, with the data attached, then [it] may come to consume. Several brands from manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Sony etc ... allow the user to restrict the use of mobile data in the background of some apps (natives or not, which consume a lot of franchise or not). And these manufacturers allow two types of restrictions in the background. A: general, aiming not to exceed the limit of data used of the franchise, two: specific, whereby the user manually restricts or de-restricts the apps that are or are not consuming data (internet). Now, one thing needs to be said, depending on the version of android, of course, the place where the user can restrict apps from consuming rem background may be different. So to use a standard reference - in my understanding - I will use Samsung as a manufacturer reference, and the Android versions between 4.1 and below 5.0, aiming as I said, on average. It should be noted that in every app (native) can be made such a restriction. Of some native apps (not counting offlines, for entertainment), they depend on all the stability of the operating system, and not only, but they do not use any mobile data, even when connected. Returning to stick with google services, you need to expose two of your own characteristics. [It] does not use any data in the foreground (since it can not be accessed internally, since it has no icon in the application grid), and the second is that [it] uses data in the background (regardless if you are inside the play store "downloading something" and, or if automatic notification update synchronization is disabled).*The problem is that if the user restricts the background data consumption (specific form) of the play store app, for example, if he [user] decides to re-enable such consumption of the app referred to, it will do so without any problems. It is only the user (after accessing it internally, and spending a few kb / s of data browsing "in the store") to go to the mobile data consumption meter on your device and the list with the most consumed internet apps, click on top of the app you want the restriction (in this case, the play store) and choose this option. However, if the same restriction for the google services app happens the opposite. The primary constraint becomes irreversible! At least, that's what I said, I'm not in this forum, maybe someone points out an effective deal. Anyway, let's see why this [reported] is given. Remember the explanation, where he said: just spend a few kb / s, for this consumption to appear in the meter of consumption, and be clicking on top of such app? I was referring to the play store, I made it clear ... or not? Well, since google services does not use anything in the foreground, it will be impossible to make [such an app] appear on the referenced meter. This implies the possibility of reactivating consumption in the background (if restricted), not only referring to google services, but all apps that do not consume anything in the foreground.