Is the Pixel a Data Hog?

[booboolala2000]

Have had my Pixel for a few weeks now and my data usage has shot through the roof. 8 gig of data vs 5 on average for the rest of the year on my 6p. Photos backup and clear space only over Wi-Fi. Location services are the same as they ever were, which is high accuracy. Is anyone else noticing more data usage?

 

[Almeuit]

Check under settings > data usage and see what it says there.

 

[Rocky5000100]

Nope.

I'd be willing to bet since you re-installed all your apps on a new phone, that you forgot to turn of things like Facebook Auto-Play videos, etc. You should change that so it only autoplays over WiFi.

It would help us diagnose your issue if you posted a screenshot of your data usage page.

 

[UtahRoadie]

I am actually running lower than my S7E on Verizon.

 

[anon(847090)]

Have had my Pixel for a few weeks now and my data usage has shot through the roof. 8 gig of data vs 5 on average for the rest of the year on my 6p. Photos backup and clear space only over Wi-Fi. Location services are the same as they ever were, which is high accuracy. Is anyone else noticing more data usage?

post a screenshot of data usage

Check under settings > data usage and see what it says there.

+1

 

[booboolala2000]

Here is a screen shot. Thinking I need to adjust some play music settings. QuLity is ready at the medium level. Podcasts are probably the culprit. But that is only part of the problem.

 

[booboolala2000]

Here is the shot.

 

[xxaarraa]

It's more Nougat than Pixel, but yes, it's a data hog. Go through cellular data permissions for each app and turn off background data. Google play services, google app (google now) are the big offenders. Turning off background data for both has not seem to have had a detrimental impact on my google now experience (Im a huge google now fan). I've managed to get my pixel data usage locked down pretty tight and on project fi, so save a bunch of $$ that way.

 

[booboolala2000]

So after going through some settings in FB like video auto play. And a few other things. My Pixel has leveled off. Still the greatest Android phone I have ever owned. Now if FB could lighten up their app a bit. That's a whole other can of worms. Thanks for the reminder about auto play. Happy Pixeling.

 

[Brandwin]

If someone has unlimited data, there is no advantage to turning any of this off, right? Or small battery saving?

 

[recDNA]

If someone has unlimited data, there is no advantage to turning any of this off, right? Or small battery saving?

Might help battery and performance. Only so much the phone can do at once.

 

[Almeuit]

If someone has unlimited data, there is no advantage to turning any of this off, right? Or small battery saving?

That would really be it. I leave all syncs and all that on. No issues.

 

[Almeuit]

Might help battery and performance. Only so much the phone can do at once.

Performance wouldn't even be noticeable. With the processors now a days things like syncing doesn't use much.

 

[xxaarraa]

I was playing with my friend's 11 year old yesterday and going into game show mode etc. During one of the questions we asked, google played a song via the google music app. We switched back to other questions and moved on. I get home, and lo and behold, google music app had used over 100 megs of data! Supposedly it was still streaming in the background even though I have background data turned off (weird), and you have to go into the app and change the setting to only stream via wifi to get it to stop streaming over cellular network.

This part of the android ecosystem really pisses me off - the fragmentation and poor coding across the board. If anyone ever used a Samsung phone, you know the hoops we have to jump through to turn off loopholes and disable crap. The settings loopholes in a vanilla android phone like the Pixel is annoying. You shouldn't have to buy a phone and spend hours supervising the apps and tweaking settings. Everything should be set to conserve data and battery as default instead of the other way around.

Anyway, one 30 second call to Project Fi and they quickly issued a data credit (LOVE being able to request a call back right from the phone, and they call right away). They do issue service credits often, which is nice, but I wish they would log these bugs and just fix them.

 

[Almeuit]

I was playing with my friend's 11 year old yesterday and going into game show mode etc. During one of the questions we asked, google played a song via the google music app. We switched back to other questions and moved on. I get home, and lo and behold, google music app had used over 100 megs of data! Supposedly it was still streaming in the background even though I have background data turned off (weird), and you have to go into the app and change the setting to only stream via wifi.

This part of the android ecosystem really pisses me off. The fragmentation and poor coding across the board. You shouldn't have to buy a phone and spend hours supervising the apps and tweaking settings.

Everything should be set to conserve data and battery as default instead of the other way around.

Anyway, one 30 second call to Project Fi and they issued a data credit. They do that often, which is nice, but I wish they would log these bugs and just fix them.

While I get what you mean then some people would be on the other side of the boat being mad they have to allow all to use data and say things like "They shouldn't police my data" type of things. GPM is meant to stream in the background if you have it playing but if you have it off the background data restricts it. Such as I hate how Apple restricts a lot of things to WiFi only when I may want to do it over data -- Why should they choose what I do / don't do with my data? While theirs is strictly WiFi only -- Android luckily isn't that bad and gives options.

If you ever let anyone (such a child) play with your phone be sure to check it afterwards as they don't understand things like data and whatnot usually.

 

[BoogieNY]

We have a business account and when I got the Note 7 there was some issues with syncing it to the office wifi -- twice -- and we wound up getting tagged in a big way when I thought all the downloads for reinstalling all my apps (about 200 of them, on two separate Note 7 devices). We wound up using about 8 GB of data two months straight after never exceeding 4.5GB or 5GB. Really pissed me off. Verizon was really good about resolving the issue (by ignoring the excess and giving us partial credit for the overage). I've been using a 7EDGE since I returned the two Note7's and was very careful to make sure no updates were happening except by wifi, and I'm bookmarking this thread to ensure that wifi-only updates is pretty much the first setting I establish once my Pixel XL arrives.

I think all these "great" features -- the Google assistant, etc. -- are useful and have merit, but the negative is not just data usage but battery wear and tear and an overall hit on performance. I have a new Samsung S2 Galaxy Tab 9.7 that has a data usage setting option for each of my apps, and given I've got over 250 apps installed on the tab (and almost 200 on my handset) I figure better safe than sorry.

Short version: setting the phone to only update via wifi unless you specifically suggest otherwise is a really good idea regardless of which handset you're using.

 

[xxaarraa]

Short version: setting the phone to only update via wifi unless you specifically suggest otherwise is a really good idea regardless of which handset you're using.

I don't think you have read this whole thread. Updating apps over wifi only is but one small setting - there are many many more settings buried in different layers of the operating system you have to tweak to get a stable, low data, high battery Pixel.

 

[BoogieNY]

I don't think you have read this whole thread. Updating apps over wifi only is but one small setting - there are many many more settings buried in different layers of the operating system you have to tweak to get a stable, low data, high battery Pixel.

I did -- my point was just that it's very easy to let data overages take control if you don't take steps -- little ones as well as big ones -- to make sure they don't.

 

[Almeuit]

I keep all syncs on and so far Gmail has only used 26 MB or so and that's with lots of email. I have unlimited but I've never seen anything up there in data usage except for video streaming or music streaming which I actively do. If I didn't open it the background usage would be minimal.

 

[cydewaze]

Well for the first time since I've had this data plan (2 years) I finally got a low data notification. Fortunately it was on the last day of the billing cycle, but I didn't have this phone for the entire data cycle, so I'm a little worried. I know a lot of that was finally having a phone that was fast and worked, and I know I installed a few things using data, so I'm hoping I won't have this problem next month. But I've gone through my high usage apps and cut off background data anyway.

Now, does anyone know if these phones do that stupid thing where they use LTE to boost speeds while on WiFi? When I'm on WiFi, I want to ONLY be using WiFi.