Saturday, November 20, 2010

Data usage

Apple iPhone 4 - Data usage

I just upgraded to iPhone 4, and I'm trying to keep an eye on my data usage. I checked it at 8:17 this morning (using the *3282# text message to AT&T) and my total so far this month was 317.7 MB. The phone basically sat unused on my desk all day, and when I checked *3282# again at 3:27 this afternoon, my total is now 328.8MB. In other words, it used 11 megs, just sitting on my desk doing nothing.

No phone calls, no internet browsing, no GPS fixes. How come?

I have push notifications turned off, data roaming off. 3G is turned on, but I didn't actually use the phone for anything.

iPhone 4
That is what we want Apple iPhone 4
Non of the methods of checking usage ( text, app or web site) are up to the minute. They tend to lag behind by as much as days.

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Why not try the ATT mobile app? Doesn't use text.

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The AT&T App is no more up to date than the text message, in fact I suspect it gets it's information from the same place.

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I wasn't addressing the issue of being more (or less) up-to-date, rather that the app doesn't use text.

Myself, I've opted out of text. The app works better for me.

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I've also wondered what the mystery-data-usage is -- often in the middle of the night, when my phone is at home & on wi-fi & I'm asleep anyway! The times that my usage is listed (in the online info it's listed by time & date) is happening when I'm *not even using my phone*, it's not doing anything but sitting on a table. I have *no* notifications set, *no* pushes, *no* mail or info fetching.
??

Someday I may have to call & ask them what-gives on this.

Even though I'm not close to using my allowance, I *am* on a limited plan -- so why are they using up some of my bytes??

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I thought that texts from AT&T were free. AT&T has told me several times that the ones to check minutes, balance, etc. do not come out of your monthly text allotment.

One thing I found when I was getting chunks of unexplained data was I had some games that use OpenFeint. I had it turned on. When I turned it off, most of my unexplained data stopped. You might have some games that are updating or sending stats to the server. OpenFeint is on a lot of games that I have but now I always click on "off". It is a scoreboard type feature.

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They are free. I don't have a text allotment; I get charged for any texts I do send or receive, but not for the ones I've gotten from ATT.

I turn off any such "features" as soon as I see them in the options, and I usually go right to options with a new game so I can turn off the noise. :-)

I have used those games very little -- mostly just once or twice when first d/l to see whether or not I like them.

Even if something like that has escaped me it doesn't explain why it's using *data plan* rather than the wi-fi everything else uses when I'm home (unless I'm actually using the phone as a *phone*, when it uses *phone minutes* not data).

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