What is using up so much data usage???

[libertylondon]

My brother and I just got two HTC Aria phones last weekend. We both have 200MB/month to use. It's been seven days and he's only used 35MB but my phone says I've used 231MB already this past week.

I haven't done anything on this phone except look at e-mails. I haven't used facebook or even used the web browser yet. But my bill says that for the past three consecutive nights, around midnight, I used 64932KB. What is running on my phone that I don't know about? What is using the 3G data?

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

Widgets. depending on sync settings you might have apps that are pulling data too. it's hard to say. I'm also not aware of any apps that let you track data usage per app. Does anyone know of something like this? I would be interested in it, too.

 

[slowman]

Dang. So happy I got grandfathered in to keeping my unlimited data.

 

[wyountrx]

I found without setting my task killer to aggressive and activate on screen off that many apps were starting up, updating, and pingng constantly when the phone wasn't even in use.

 

[whitenack]

It could be that AT&T is mistaken. As soon as I got my phone last week, I installed 3G Watchdog. According to Watchdog, I have used 11 mb. According to AT&T, I have used 870 kbs. My wife got an aria at the same time. I didn't get Watchdog on it, but she never uses her phone outside of wifi. However, according to AT&T, she has used 21mbs.

 

[Kevin OQuinn]

It could be that AT&T is mistaken. As soon as I got my phone last week, I installed 3G Watchdog. According to Watchdog, I have used 11 mb. According to AT&T, I have used 870 kbs. My wife got an aria at the same time. I didn't get Watchdog on it, but she never uses her phone outside of wifi. However, according to AT&T, she has used 21mbs.

Try telling AT&T that they are wrong. LOL Unless she turns data off on her phone when she leaves the house or keeps her phone at home you can't say it's not using data. It could be and you're just not noticing it.

 

[whitenack]

Try telling AT&T that they are wrong. LOL Unless she turns data off on her phone when she leaves the house or keeps her phone at home you can't say it's not using data. It could be and you're just not noticing it.

OK, true, but how to explain the discrepancy on my phone, where AT&T actually shows less?

The reason I estimate my wife doesn't use very much is because she is at home 90% of the time, which uses wifi. The other 10% of the time, she isn't surfing the web or downloading files, so I the only thing that should be using data is Google Latitide in the background, or something similar.

To the OP, how do you close out of your apps? Do you hit the "back" button, or do you hit the "home" key? I assume using the "back" button to close out of apps is preferred over just hitting the "home" button when you are finished with something.

 

[ravyn80]

If you have the weather on the clock, it's going to use data every now and again just to update the weather. I believe it does that even though you don't have it up.

 

[hayes]

To much data usage.

My wife and I got new phones 4 months ago. She got the HTC Aria. I got the Blackberry Torch. I use my Blackberry all the time for email, texting, internet browsing and FB. My wife doesn't do anything on her phone except talk on it.
My data usage is 12.8 MB and her phone has used 40 MB. On my bill it shows that the HTC phone uses data several times during the night if not turned off.
The only thing I can find that is on is the time and weather function. Called ATT yesterday and about it and got no where with them. Just about every morning when she turns it on it shows on the data usage, that it has sent/used around 1 MB of data. Can the weather be using that much data?

 

[whitenack]

Yes, there is all sorts of things running in the background that is updating every so often. Your contact list, your calendar, your gps location, your email, your weather, etc.

You have 200 mb on your data plan...if you are only using 40mb a month you don't have much to worry about.

 

[rajkumar_NYC]

Make sure you don't have any news apps installed. I downloaded and ran TrafficStats Lite app and found out that the ABC News app that I had installed had used 990 MB in 2 weeks, even though I had NOT USED IT EVEN ONCE in that time. Uninstalled ABC News app, and now data usage is fine. If you like news apps, download and run TrafficStats Lite app to see how much data they use before keeping them, but ABC News app is a definite No-No for limited data plans.