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Ask Slashdot: Measuring (and Constraining) Mobile Data Use?
An anonymous reader writes: I've carried a smart phone for several years, but for much of that time it's been (and I suspect this is true for anyone for whom money is an object) kept pretty dumb — at least for anything more data-intensive than Twitter and the occasional map checking. I've been using more of the smart features lately (Google Drive and Keep are seductive.) Since the data package can be expensive, though, and even though data is cheaper than it used to be, that means I don't check Facebook often, or upload pictures to friends by email, unless I'm in Wi-Fi zone (like home, or a coffee shop, etc). Even so, it seems I'm using more data than I realized, and I'd like to keep it under the 2GB allotment I'm paying for. I used to think half a gig was generous, but now I'm getting close to that 2GB I've paid for, most months.
This makes me a little paranoid, which leads to my first question: How accurate are carriers' own internal tools for measuring use, and do you recommend any third-party apps for keeping track of data use? Ideally, I'd like a detailed breakdown by app, over time: I don't think I'm at risk for data-stealing malware on my phone (the apps I use are either built-in, or plain-vanilla ones from Google's store, like Instagram, Twitter's official client, etc.), but of course really well-crafted malware would be tough to guard against or to spot. And even if they can be defeated, more and more sites (Facebook, for one) now play video just because I've rolled over a thumbnail. Read on for second part of the question. Second, what tools or tips can you offer for doling out my data more carefully? Can you name some apps that actually do a good job of minimizing data transfer, or managing apps' data use to at least to look harder for a Wi-Fi connection? I know Opera Mobile uses compression to minimize data transfer, and I'm sure it's possible to turn off many of the annoying sound-bearing ads of the world.
In short, what are some ways to get the most use from my limited data allotment, and be mindful about the ways I *do* spend it? This will be even more important if, as I hope, my next laptop has built-in data service. Web sites are I suspect only going to want to use more of my bandwidth in the future, even if it does get slightly cheaper. Nowadays, browsers have made it a chore even to do things like turn off images, never mind dancing, animated ads. Turning off images used to save my 56k dialup bandwidth, and the concept here is the same. (Google doesn't exactly make turning off images in Chrome friendly enough for my mom.)
(I'm using an Android phone, but I'm sure there are iPhone users who'd like to know the answers to parallel question for Apple gear. I can't be the only one who finds cavalier bandwidth sucking by web pages to be a blood-pressure-raising offense, when I'm paying for each expensive byte. There are lots of places where even wired connections are expensive, but at least with a wired network connection things like Squid can be deployed.)
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This makes me a little paranoid, which leads to my first question: How accurate are carriers' own internal tools for measuring use, and do you recommend any third-party apps for keeping track of data use? Ideally, I'd like a detailed breakdown by app, over time: I don't think I'm at risk for data-stealing malware on my phone (the apps I use are either built-in, or plain-vanilla ones from Google's store, like Instagram, Twitter's official client, etc.), but of course really well-crafted malware would be tough to guard against or to spot. And even if they can be defeated, more and more sites (Facebook, for one) now play video just because I've rolled over a thumbnail. Read on for second part of the question. Second, what tools or tips can you offer for doling out my data more carefully? Can you name some apps that actually do a good job of minimizing data transfer, or managing apps' data use to at least to look harder for a Wi-Fi connection? I know Opera Mobile uses compression to minimize data transfer, and I'm sure it's possible to turn off many of the annoying sound-bearing ads of the world.
In short, what are some ways to get the most use from my limited data allotment, and be mindful about the ways I *do* spend it? This will be even more important if, as I hope, my next laptop has built-in data service. Web sites are I suspect only going to want to use more of my bandwidth in the future, even if it does get slightly cheaper. Nowadays, browsers have made it a chore even to do things like turn off images, never mind dancing, animated ads. Turning off images used to save my 56k dialup bandwidth, and the concept here is the same. (Google doesn't exactly make turning off images in Chrome friendly enough for my mom.)
(I'm using an Android phone, but I'm sure there are iPhone users who'd like to know the answers to parallel question for Apple gear. I can't be the only one who finds cavalier bandwidth sucking by web pages to be a blood-pressure-raising offense, when I'm paying for each expensive byte. There are lots of places where even wired connections are expensive, but at least with a wired network connection things like Squid can be deployed.)
Have a question for Slashdot's readers? Take a look at other recent questions first to see if someone else has had a similar question. And if not, ask away! The more details and context you include, the more likely your question will be selected.
Why would you want to turn off ads? If you could do that, there's no point in these companies spending all their time and energy producing the device.
Just use a sane carrier like T-Mobile or similar that gives everyone unlimited data and just throttles you after that. I never even think about it.
Android has a built in data meter (at least in Cyanogenmod/AOSP). Go under mobile data and it will break it down by app.
Now install DroidWall and disable network access for your apps that don't need it. I walked out of my house once listening to a YouTube "video" lecture (screen off via XPosed plugin) and blew through my entire 300MB data plan on that.
2GB is crazy-high usage if you're trying to be conservative - I have email and calendar sync and occasional photo uploads on trips and rarely have to buy an extra data card.
I presume you have to own your phone (be "rooted") to do such useful things. Being slashdot this should be safe to assume.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have an iPhone5S w/VZW and find their tools to be 100% spot on. Between my wife and I, we end up right at our 4GB limit each month and sometimes we're in airplane mode + wifi for a day or more in order to make it under the wire. I feel VZW's own tools are just fine for monitoring my bandwidth, at least at this point in time.
Many of you will ask why we just don't add more to our plan. Well, that's simple: I don't believe that carriers should be able to charge what they do for the limited amount of bandwidth they provide; data is the new SMS (something I also refused to pay for when I was on AT&T and instead forced the carrier to block all incoming SMS to my phone and I used Google Voice + iMessage to avoid paying for it).
YMMV.
I would see what apps are the most egregious, make sure you are on wifi at work and home and go from there. You can also look into cyanogen or other roms for your phones that allow you to turn data off at the app level.
Also, look into ting, since now you can use GSM or CDMA phones on their service. Well worth it.
Silence is a state of mime.
Android 4.0.4 on a Sprint device has "System Settings" "Wireless & Networks" "Data usage". It lets you set a "warning", a "limit", shows a graph of cumulative usage over the past month, and also breaks down traffic by app.
note: I have at least one, possibly two other, Slashdot accounts because OpenID creds can't be merged with an older acco
do you recommend any third-party apps for keeping track of data use?
On Android? No. Data usage is a baked in feature since forever ago, including an app by app breakdown, warning levels and mobile data cutoff limit. Just use that - it should be buried in settings somewhere.
As far as data limiting tools, the only thing like that I've ever used is DroidWall, which is just a simple GUI for IPTables. It does require root (!) but once installed you can hand out network privileges (Roam, Data, WiFi, all independently) on an app by app basis. This lets you keep data crazy apps from ever touching a cell tower (WiFi only), or apps that have no good reason to be calling the outside world from doing so. Just be warned that a blacklist by default policy means installing a new app isn't just as simple as pushing install - you also have to remember to set it's network rights, or most mobile apps won't work as designed. All that said, I'll admit that DroidWall isn't a perfect solution for what you're looking for (requires root, no way of throttling an app, just yes/no access) but it might still be useful.
Do you have wifi at home and work? If so, turn the phone off, put it in airplane mode, or shut off cellular data; you are doing something wrong if you think you are a light user and are consuming more than 1GB/month. I do video conferencing, web meetings, VNC, and a few other data-intensive uses, and am around 1GB/month (up from 250MB though a year or two ago).
With the iPhone you get application-specific cellular data usage, and you can limit applications' access; I assume Android does the same. For my iPhone, about half of my usage is system services and the app store (needed to replace phone while on the road, so I had to download everything over cell).
Juice Defender is another app along these lines. It is mainly intended for dealing with prolonging battery life by turning off the data and Wi-Fi options, only turning them on at selected intervals to allow mail to be fetched.
Started using "My Data Manager" recently on android. It shows data by app per time period. There's a lot of other stuff out there, probably plenty better and plenty worse, and probably most of it free like this one. Still...it seems pretty invaluable. I just use it to see which apps are using way more data than they ought to on my unlimited plan, but it also lets you set alarms, and it differentiates between wifi/phone data use.
Most mobile web browsers make it difficult to keep a device "clean from malware" that is written in JavaScript and served through advertising networks. Without wiping a device to root it, for example, there's no way to install a third-party firewall.
I have a stock Nexus 5 with Lollipop (Android 5.something) and they put in a pretty excellent data meter under Settings | Data Usage
It shows a cumulative graph of data usage over time, and a linear projection up to the end of the month for your billing plan, along with a customizable warning threshold. Under that it lists a histogram of how many MB is used by each app. Click on those, and you can configure background data for each app to restrict them to only update on wifi (or not at all).
This is pretty much a solved problem if you can convince your phone manufacturer to update you to Android 5 (or just flash a CyanogenMOD build yourself like I used to do on every phone I had before my Nexus 5)
Apps can never background update if you have your 3g radio off except when you're using it. As an extra bonus, it also saves you tons of battery (I turn off wifi and gps when I'm not using them, too, even though they don't cost any money to leave on). If I turn my 3g on and immediately notice it start flashing like something is using data, that's a big red flag, then I investigate what's doing it.
I'm a huge fan of Ting - when it was just me using it by myself (now we've merged several accounts, so bookkeeping would be more complicated), my phone bill was usually an amazingly low ~16 bucks after taxes and fees. I got that because I rarely went above the lowest data bracket of only 100 MB. I used data as much as I needed to - I was just mindful of it. Occasionally I'd go above 100 MB and have to pay an extra ~10 bucks that month for the 500 MB bucket, which I was alright with. I can't even imagine needing 2 GB, though. (Now me and my wife have a combined 500 MB bucket for a couple dollars more each, which is even nicer. We *never* go above that.)
There may not be any need to panic and start fixating on what every little app is doing.
But then again, there might. How is one to know? That's the biggest problem I have with the mobile telecom computing model. I have no idea what the apps do, and no way, other than make it my life's work, to find out.
I hate having to trust the OS provider that everything is properly sandboxed, that none of the apps in their stores are malware, etc. What's going on, inside this box?
A gigabyte of data transmitted over the public Internet is not worth a dollar, much less $10.
It costs tens of billions of dollars to bid on licensed spectrum and billions more to actually deploy a modern cellular network. That's not to say that the wireless industry isn't profitable (it certainly is) but you can't equate their cost structure with wireline networks.
The carriers have got to stop gouging the public for access to Internet services
Gouging? How old are you? I remember paying $20/mo for dial up internet just 15 years ago. $40/mo if you count the second POTS line. Now I've got the rough equivalent of a T3 in my pocket, for $30/mo, that I can use almost anywhere in the continental United States.
Then there's T-Mo as someone else mentioned, but they have the huge downside that you get throttled after a certain amount of data
Your information is out of date, T-Mo does not throttle on their unlimited plan. What they do is use QoS to prioritize customers in the bottom 97% percentile over customers in the top 3% during times of congestion. If you're connected to a non-congested tower you can suck data 24/7/365. Verizon does something similar with their 3G network. It's a whole lot of bellyaching about nothing in my experience; there are congested cell sites here and there but they're the exception rather than the rule.
Apart from that, the two key differences between T-Mobile and Verizon are:
1. T-Mo's unlimited plan doesn't include tethering. Verizon's does, free of charge with a rooted device or $30/mo without one. And no, it's not "stealing" to get it for free with root; the Band 13 rules specifically say you can use any application you want and Verizon has never hassled those that tether without paying for the hotspot feature. They even hassled people doing it on the 3G network even though it's a technical violation of the customer agreement and they'd be within their rights to prohibit it.
2. T-Mo's unlimited plan won't follow you when you're roaming domestically. Verizon doesn't care how much of your data or minute usage occurs on partner networks.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
My Android phone has a data measuring tool built-in and also warns and stops when you hit the limit. It's not rocket-science, it's already there in the settings on any vaguely recent phone (fuck knows about Apple, because I don't care about them).
If you don't have a vaguely recent phone then install something like Onavo, which does exactly that.
Also, if you're doing 2Gb on a mobile, stop using the mobile for data, connect to Wifi, or up your package. How hard is this? Pissing about shrinking images hasn't done much since the days of Opera Mobile and WAP.
This is Slashdot and you HAVEN'T worked this shit out?
Umm no, T-Mobile falls back to 2G speeds, around 64-128 kbps. While not literally dial-up speeds, it's pretty much the same neighborhood.
Your carrier's billing system will never agree with what's collected on your phone. They'll typically see more sent on the downstream (tower -> phone) than your device because of retransmissions of packets your phone never received. Likewise, they'll see less on the upstream (phone -> tower) for the same reason. They can't bill you for a failed packet on the upstream but your phone will still count it.
In the real world the difference isn't statistically significant; Verizon usually agrees with my phone to within 1%. It's just something to be mindful of when you're getting close to your cap or if you're roaming and paying those rates.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I'm not sure why you are fretting about data use when there are plenty of unlimited plans available (You didn't say where you live, so I'm guessing US based on slashdot user base). Telecommunications companies have been making an effort to push us all into tiered / limited data plans mostly to boost their bottom lines. T-Mobile offers 2 lines with unlimited data for $100 a month - so why accept limited data from a-holes like ATT or Verizon? Show them what you think of their policies by giving your money to their competitors instead.
Two-line ISDN setups were offered here in the US as well, and later DSL would pump even more data over the same lines, but when Americans say "dial-up," they're generally referring to 14-56k connections.