HTC Hero newbie data usage question

[jmes77]

At the end of May I purchased a HTC Hero from an east coast regional cell carrier named nTelos. I set the phone up to sync with my work Exchange email. I'm running pretty much the stock apps and doing what I consider pretty light usage of the phone.

I received my first full months statement a couple days ago and they stated that I had used 2054MB of data usage on my phone for the month of June. Is that a normal amount of usage for a Hero?

The usage just seems astronomical to me, and they keep blaming the "always on" apps that keep checking stuff. I think they are miscalculating the usage or something.

I'm just curious what other Hero users on other carriers average on their phones. I do some web browsing, mostly checking email, and that is pretty much it, I'm not streaming music, I'm not watching videos, or tethering.

I'm stumped and wondering if anyone out there could give me some insight. I have installed an app called NetCounter on my phone and the numbers it is reporting seem kosher to me, but they are wildly different from what my carrier is reporting. For the period from June 28 through July 10, NetCounter reported 27MB of cell usage, and the carrier is reporting 425MB.

Does anyone else use NetCounter, and is it accurate for them?

 

[riggsandroid]

I received my first full months statement a couple days ago and they stated that I had used 2054MB of data usage on my phone for the month of June. Is that a normal amount of usage for a Hero?

The usage just seems astronomical to me, and they keep blaming the "always on" apps that keep checking stuff. I think they are miscalculating the usage or something.

1. Are you getting charged any overages?

2. Seems high to me for not doing any streaming, etc. However, if you get a lot of emails and are having it transfer ALL your emails, etc. It could be high from that. What is your email like?

3. I use a little over that with pretty good media usage.

 

[jmes77]

1. No I am not getting charged any overages at this point. I'm being conservative with my usage until I find a good pace of usage.

2. Its downloading 5k of each email, it checks every 30 minutes, and I get maybe 200 or 300 emails per day on average.

Other than that I use the google map app maybe twice a month, and I installed Shazam and tagged maybe half a dozen songs.

To try to counteract the usage I've been putting the phone on my wifi network at home so I'm only on the 3G network maybe 10-12 hours per day. When I enable the wifi I also turn off mobile network. So this is another reason why the usage they are reporting just doesn't seem to add up to me.

 

[Fazulka]

1. No I am not getting charged any overages at this point. I'm being conservative with my usage until I find a good pace of usage.

2. Its downloading 5k of each email, it checks every 30 minutes, and I get maybe 200 or 300 emails per day on average.

Other than that I use the google map app maybe twice a month, and I installed Shazam and tagged maybe half a dozen songs.

To try to counteract the usage I've been putting the phone on my wifi network at home so I'm only on the 3G network maybe 10-12 hours per day. When I enable the wifi I also turn off mobile network. So this is another reason why the usage they are reporting just doesn't seem to add up to me.

Holy crap! that is a staggeringly large amount of email! I am not sure, but I would bet that shazam takes a huge amount of data. I think it uploads the song you have it listen too, to there is a big data transfer. Google maps may take quite a bit too if you are using satellite view. I recommend, as you may imagine, that if you are using a smart phone you should get a data plan. If you are using it that much for work ask if they will help cover the monthly expense.

Also, if those 200-300 e-mail have images in them, the 5k may not include downloading the images, just showing them from a web server.

 

[etnpnys]

Dude you get more email than a help desk. 2 gigs of data is really really high.

By comparison: I commute about 3 hours each day about 4 days/week and use Stitcher heavily - probably at least 75% of my driving time. I download apps like a madman and I surf the web often.

I usually use between 1 and 1.5 gigs of data per month. I blame your email. I can't even imagine what it would be like to personally receive 300 emails per day.

 

[indyalex]

I use about 3 gb's per mo.,lots of internet radio,you tube & web use in general.

 

[srkmagnus]

Check the market for apps that monitor data usage - 3G watchdog is one such app that will tell you how much data you are using.