Average android data use on 3G (basic use!)

[kingd53]

Hi All

Looking to upgrade from my 9780 crapberry to an android smartphone (S2, Xperia S or HTC One X).

My aim is to save heavy data usage (media streaming, large downloads, etc) for home and work wifi and keep 'basic' usage on contract 3G which will probably be 250MB per month.

I'm trying to get an idea of what basic usage is to make sure I'm not going to be raped by vodacom when I go over my 250 MB data limit. Need to budget for stuff like this these days. Living costs are ridiculous!

Any ideas?

 

[onlyoneken]

What do you call "basic" usage? I keep my Desire S on edge for battery saving puposes and seldom do more than a moderate amount of browsing away from wifi, as well as downloading some mail, chatting on watsap and social networking. I find that i seldom use more than 75MB a month with moderate usage of the above.

 

[Elimentals]

I use anything between 100-200 MB per month but have access to WiFi @ home/work

I have used up as much as 2 gig/month but that was because I had it back in the Cell C days with the data special, also with no access to WiFi at that stage.

Best advice if you do go for android is to look at applications like Onovo to limit and report your data use. It also give you the ability to limit applications to WiFi only if they are data hungry.

 

[kingd53]

@onlyoneken: You've pretty much summed up 'basic usage' for me. I guess it depends on what each individual describes as moderate. I often browse the web but mostly SA sites, I'm on twitter a lot which takes me to international websites that are sometime quite large data drains, then it's mostly google maps and then basic BB 9780 background app usage. 75MB sounds fine as I'm gonna be hunting for contracts with at least 100MB per month for 24 months.

@Elimentals: Onovo will be a must have but it's going to be frustrating watching 100MB of data being used up in 2 days with 'basic usage'. I'm trying to get an idea if I'm going to be safe with the contract provisions or if I'll have to budget for an extra 500MB a month or not.

 

[mike156]

You should be fine with wifi at home and at work. You can use opera mini to help save data and juice defender can be used to automatically manage the phones wifi connection.

 

[Ecco]

I have used MTNs 75Mb bundle, and its been sufficient for me. Very rarely went out of bundle.

 

[CranialBlaze]

Problem is these days basic is an extremely relative term, there is a guy on this forum who's basic usage is 6gb per month, another will be able to use 75, me I get away with less than 50mb per month but thats because I have wifi both at work and at home.

For me personally apps like Onavo Count is fairly useless, without root all you are really doing is wasting battery, as onavo is not a root enabled app all it does is when an app you restricted to wifi tries to access data it simply kills the task, now most apps will restart themselves within a few seconds and again try to access data. The act of killing and restarting will significantly decrease your phones average battery.

If you really want to block apps properly then you need a rooted solution and will obviously have to root your phone, with routed its more like a firewall so it truely blocks data access without having to kill the app in order to try and stop it from accessing data.

A better solution if you wish to steer clear from the rooting route would be Onavo Extend, been using it for a few weeks not that I need it I just wanted to form a realistic opinion on its effectiveness and usefulness, partly for later usage, referral to friends and to give users like you better advice. What it does is forms a vpn connection with a data compression server, quite similar to the way BIS works and in my experience the data compression and savings was very similar to what they state in the description. They claim up to 80% data compression and my average was 68%. Now using 68% less data for performing the same tasks is aces in my book, uses extremely little cpu and memory resources.
Obviously being a vpn the data transfer is a little slower, for me it was not anything drastic, cant even say I noticed it, but as a vpn sitting in usa its a logical expectation.

Also note, the phones on your choices list are all coming out with ICS which has a data monitor and limiter built into the core, limiting an application to wifi only data works exactly the same as a rooted solution would for Gingerbread.

 

[Nether]

ICS has a built in data metre that will disconnect you once your data limit was reached.

No rooting needed.

Choose a device with ICS, the S2 is upgradable to ICS, and you can use the international or European roms that are official from samsung, this wont void your warranty.

 

[kingd53]

@CranialBlaze:

Now using 68% less data for performing the same tasks is aces in my book, uses extremely little cpu and memory resources.

This sounds real interesting, thanks.

@Nether:

Choose a device with ICS, the S2 is upgradable to ICS, and you can use the international or European roms that are official from samsung, this wont void your warranty.

Glad to here those roms will keep warranty safe.

Sounds like ICS will help solve a lot of my concerns. I personally am leaning towards the S2 as it's price-spec value is good. Will have to upgrade to ICS as soon as. I'm sure the S2 won't come out with ICS CranialBlaze!? Thanks for the advice!

Goodbye blackberry you frot fruit, hello little green robot!

 

[CranialBlaze]

@CranialBlaze: This sounds real interesting, thanks.

@Nether: Glad to here those roms will keep warranty safe.

Sounds like ICS will help solve a lot of my concerns. I personally am leaning towards the S2 as it's price-spec value is good. Will have to upgrade to ICS as soon as. I'm sure the S2 won't come out with ICS CranialBlaze!? Thanks for the advice!

Goodbye blackberry you frot fruit, hello little green robot!

Depends on wheh last we had a shipment and which batch ur store has, but its out already. If not onbur device the moment u link up with kies u will be prompted. If memory serves it started rolling out to kies March 15. Frirnd of mine who had no idea about kies got he's ICS upgradr only last week, but its def avail for us safas.