Bye bye Unlimited Data

[Leonard1818]

Could have done the jailbreak and bought TetherMe for $5 to enable tethering with unlimited data.

Maybe you'd do Facetime a lot over 3G so it'd be worth it to you. But then you're going to be burning through the data as well.

Not everyone wants to risk their contract by doing something against the terms of service though. I would imagine carriers may step up their enforcement of this with the new plans out.

Its Verizon's and ATT's fault forcing people into contracts that they know will push them into a region with overages. Its called price fixing. ATT & Verizon are fixing the market. The only reason the feds dont go after them is because they let sprint and T-Mobile play, but they arent a competition.

They're not forcing anyone into anything. I don't HAVE to have a smart phone or even a cell phone. I don't even HAVE to switch to the tiered plan if I don't want to... If they changed the policy mid-contract, sure, there would be a problem...

I understand what you're saying... I just don't follow the logic.

AT&T will have to pry my unlimited data plan out of cold dead hands.

ha! or just drop you as a customer... they've got options.

I would bet they will allow you to keep your unlimited data though if you're not in the top X% of users...

 

[mantan]

It USED to be worth it. Unlimited was good back before throttling.....but even then very few ever went over 3GB data. The Unlimited tag was comforting......just like Free Nights and Weekends old gimmick. When in most cases you'd use very few minutes in those periods.

that's why i laugh at 'pry it from my cold dead hands' unlimited user.....none of us truly have unlimited anymore.

The 'rainy day' you're saving it for just means you'll be throttled when you reach that limit. But hey, if it makes you feel better....

 

[volntitan]

So we are considering doing this also. Of the 5 iPhones on the plan, only 2 every go over 1.5 gb. The rest rarely sniff 1/2 gb. We are more interested in the unlimited talk/text. My question is this...how much more data does LTE use than regular 3g? Trying to gauge what package we would need to look at to evaluate if worth moving or not.

 

[Blorzoga]

LTE will chew through data alarmingly fast as previously mentioned. Videos load in HD, ads that are videos load in HD, YouTube and all sites alike will use HD vids and that is usually what eats lots of data. You will download large apps in seconds on 4G and before you know it... Cap exceeded. Be mindful and stick to wifi anytime you can if capped.

or just toggle off LTE until you want to use it.

 

[Photogdave]

Ditto on all accounts. I don't use Siri too often. I haven't had to do ANYTHING software-related (or hardware for what it's worth) to my iPhone since getting it. The thing JUST WORKS. The Fascinate was a huge black mark on my impression of Samsung. I have since only purchased ONE samsung product and that was only because I got free shipping (amazon prime) on it.

My 4S will soon be passed down to my wife as well (who also loves the iphone but doesn't say it too much cause she knows I'll sell the 4S and buy her a 5 and she thinks it's a waste of money). She has always liked all-things-apple though. I'm more of a "all-things-technology" kinda guy.

Should I even ask how much you like the camera on the 4S? How do you think the revised camera on the 5 will perform?

My wife is way more into photo than me. The extent of my photo-taking is with my phone or our fancy DSLR after she's fidgeted with all of the little buttons and switches for me. She always manages to get really good shots with the horrible fascinate which I was never able to do. I imagine her pictures with the 4S will be great. And with photostream sharing, I will easily have all good pictures of my daughter right there!

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Yeah I think we're a lot a like.
As for camera i love it. Its crazy good. I'm a professional photographer and it blows me away all the time at how good it can actually be.
Ive included some images I shot horsing around while waiting on Seniors to get to me. Original and 100% crops.
They are really good. Especially for a phone, the image sensor is so small, hard to believe the image quality can be so good from a sensor that small with those tiny tiny pixels

As for the iPhone 5 camera......i would expect nothing less. I think its roughly the same. The good thing is Apple took smart road here. Many company's.....Samsung, HTC, Motorola, even Canon get caught up in Megapixels. The higher the better for marketing. But consumers don't realize, its not the quantity of the pixels, its the quality.
Adding more pixels to iPhone 5 without making the sensor real-estate any bigger would make image quality go down.....due to noise increase(grain) and then noise reduction .
At 8mp, if they make lens better(they did), then make those same pixels better at gathering light at same ISO(not sure), then the image quality gets substantially better.....more noticeably in low light......which is where these phones are used the most. Standard living room lighting. That's low for a sensor like that.
They report better low light use. But I take that as, better Autofocus and speed in low light. But hey, lets wait and see. I betting its great.
Sorry to somewhat hijack this thread, but i started to share only with Leonard1818, but thought others might be interested in a quick look and a little info.

 

[Photogdave]

So we are considering doing this also. Of the 5 iPhones on the plan, only 2 every go over 1.5 gb. The rest rarely sniff 1/2 gb. We are more interested in the unlimited talk/text. My question is this...how much more data does LTE use than regular 3g? Trying to gauge what package we would need to look at to evaluate if worth moving or not.

Thats just it. Technically, LTE uses NO more than 3G.
You are transferring same files regardless of 3G or 4G.
Looking at same website on 3G and then switching to 4G wouldn't increase the website data transferred to your phone.

However, others contention is that you will browse more due to speed increase and that will cause more data use.

So if you have discipline, it wont change.
But ask yourself, have you ever put your phone down and said screw it its not that important cause speed was sooooo slow. If so, maybe you will use more.

 

[Leonard1818]

So we are considering doing this also. Of the 5 iPhones on the plan, only 2 every go over 1.5 gb. The rest rarely sniff 1/2 gb. We are more interested in the unlimited talk/text. My question is this...how much more data does LTE use than regular 3g? Trying to gauge what package we would need to look at to evaluate if worth moving or not.

theoretically, a megabyte is a megabyte is a megabyte independent of what type of device it is pushed to and with what type of connection.

Therefore, theoretically, it should be the same.

BUT... there are other factors to consider as well:

-- 4G will be much faster, enabling you to do more things more quickly. This can lead to increased data use.

-- If you stream anything, many streaming services will optimize the content depending on your connection. In other words, the faster it recognizes your connection to be, the better quality the content is that it streams. This will equate to more data being used.

-- With the addition of new features in iOS 6 (such as facetime over celluar), your habits may change which could increase data use. Keep in mind the new front-facing camera is 720p so it will be ripping through the data when you use it over the network.

-- As another person pointed out (and I have not yet investigated but I'm now curious) 4G is a more efficient method of data transmission and may result in less dropped packets effectively reducing the amount of data you consume. Again, haven't looked into it yet but it sounds plausable.

-- Along the same lines as the "new features", tethering is now enabled. If you use this, it will certainly eat thru your data.

-- Turn-by-turn navigation. OK, I'm not going to list every new feature that can consume more data. You get the idea.

The jist of it is, if your habits stay the same as they are now and don't include a lot of streaming, you *should* see similar data consumption numbers on 4G.

There are other variables as outlined above (disclaimer: List is not all-inclusive) that need to be considered however.

 

[bogatyr]

I can see that. LTE isnt costing more data, but you may use it more.....I agree.
But thats a personal discipline issue too though agree?
Someone said they surf much more taking a dump than they did on 3G.
Id say get your ass off the pot and go back to work right?

Complete agree, usage is the user's responsibility.

I always hit Wifi when present, especially at home, I got a FAT PIPE at home. No need in cellular data.

My Verizon LTE is faster than my GF's Comcast at home, my work connection at work and my cousin's cable connection as well (I stay over there 2-3 nights a week for travel). I'm already footing $60/mo for Comcast internet (at my GF's place) and it is slower than my cell phone. So sometimes I switch to tether. I'd drop the home connection if she didn't need it too

We definitely agree that each individual needs to choose a plan to match their data usage - and avoid being a glutton if possible.

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that's why i laugh at 'pry it from my cold dead hands' unlimited user.....none of us truly have unlimited anymore.

The 'rainy day' you're saving it for just means you'll be throttled when you reach that limit. But hey, if it makes you feel better....

I've yet to be throttled by Verizon (or if they have, it isn't noticeable), and I'm sure to be in their top 5%. That might change though when all the iPhone 5's jump onto their LTE network since they throttle based on your current cell's saturation (i.e. tons of people online in the same area, they'll throttle the high end users like me).

 

[Leonard1818]

----------

Yeah I think we're a lot a like.
As for camera i love it. Its crazy good. I'm a professional photographer and it blows me away all the time at how good it can actually be.
Ive included some images I shot horsing around while waiting on Seniors to get to me. Original and 100% crops.
They are really good. Especially for a phone, the image sensor is so small, hard to believe the image quality can be so good from a sensor that small with those tiny tiny pixels

As for the iPhone 5 camera......i would expect nothing less. I think its roughly the same. The good thing is Apple took smart road here. Many company's.....Samsung, HTC, Motorola, even Canon get caught up in Megapixels. The higher the better for marketing. But consumers don't realize, its not the quantity of the pixels, its the quality.
Adding more pixels to iPhone 5 without making the sensor real-estate any bigger would make image quality go down.....due to noise increase(grain) and then noise reduction .
At 8mp, if they make lens better(they did), then make those same pixels better at gathering light at same ISO(not sure), then the image quality gets substantially better.....more noticeably in low light......which is where these phones are used the most. Standard living room lighting. That's low for a sensor like that.
They report better low light use. But I take that as, better Autofocus and speed in low light. But hey, lets wait and see. I betting its great.
Sorry to somewhat hijack this thread, but i started to share only with Leonard1818, but thought others might be interested in a quick look and a little info.

Man, those pics are phenominal!

Reminds me... just after I got my 4s, my wife had this brilliant idea to go get baby's pic taken with Santa for a Christmas card. Excellent! So after driving around, finding parking, waiting in the cold, we get in and put her on his lap.

Awwwwkkkward silence ensues. We look at the guy behind the giant camera. He looks at us. We look at santa, he looks at us. We look at the person standing there... they look at us....

"Would you like to take a picture with Santa?" said the one worker...

(my wife and I looking oddly at each other... nodding....)

"yes, that's what we're here for"

"oh well, we don't actually take the pictures for you... we just provide santa and the (shed) that he sits in"

"oh...well... we thought.... (gesturing at the guy behind the camera)...."

"No, he's just here to do a [news piece or something else, I don't remember]"

It hits us that we just drove around looking for parking, stood out in the cold with a 7-month old and now we don't even get our picture.

You can guess how the rest of the story goes... I pull out my new, shiny, 4s and start snapping away. I even gave it to the worker and he took our picture (whole family) for us.

All of which came out GREAT and were used on our Christmas card! I was EXTREMELY happy that the iPhone saved the day!

Ironically, my wife had said before we left "I wonder if they'll let us use our own camera and take the pics. I'd rather do it myself with my camera" She has a.... really stretching here.... Nikkon D3100(??) Does that exist? Whatever it's called, it was like $800 or something...

She second-guessed herself citing that they would NEVER let you take your own pics cause that's how they get their money, selling you pics. We determined that we didn't want it just sitting in the car waiting to be stolen and it was really cold out so we didn't want it sitting out in the cold. We left it at home. little did we know.... ha ha!

 

[volntitan]

Well let me ask for some advice then. As I might have mentioned, my sister is using 4-5 gb a month...the closest after that is my daughter, who maybe uses 2.0 max a month. I might use 1.5 and my wife and mother don't use .5 combined. So just found out a couple of interesting things:

1) My sister's usage is happening late at night after she goes to bed. Of the 4.4 gb she has used this month 98% is coming when she is asleep. Something is going on here. The phone is plugged in the wall with all apps closed. Going to AT&T to find out what is going on. ONce get that settled, her usage will drop dramatically.

2) Daughter. Turns out she doesn't use wifi because she thinks it drains the battery too quickly. I told her to turn wifi on and charge more. Her numbers will drop.

Meanwhile, we are going to have to up our minutes because we are eating our rollover quickly. So my choice is this:

1) Up the minutes and keep unlimited data, even though btwn us (after I figured out the unusual data from sister and daughter) we probably use less than 4-5 gb a month. Cost per phone before tax = $68/month.

2) Go to the 10gb share plan. Unlimited talk/text is the big positive. Limiting our data to 10gb the negative, but well within our usage range? The cost per phone on this would be $54 per phone.

Of the 5 phones, 2 will be iPhone 5.

Thoughts? Any would be appreciated!!

 

[Leonard1818]

Well let me ask for some advice then. As I might have mentioned, my sister is using 4-5 gb a month...the closest after that is my daughter, who maybe uses 2.0 max a month. I might use 1.5 and my wife and mother don't use .5 combined. So just found out a couple of interesting things:

1) My sister's usage is happening late at night after she goes to bed. Of the 4.4 gb she has used this month 98% is coming when she is asleep. Something is going on here. The phone is plugged in the wall with all apps closed. Going to AT&T to find out what is going on. ONce get that settled, her usage will drop dramatically.

2) Daughter. Turns out she doesn't use wifi because she thinks it drains the battery too quickly. I told her to turn wifi on and charge more. Her numbers will drop.


Meanwhile, we are going to have to up our minutes because we are eating our rollover quickly. So my choice is this:

1) Up the minutes and keep unlimited data, even though btwn us (after I figured out the unusual data from sister and daughter) we probably use less than 4-5 gb a month. Cost per phone before tax = $68/month.

2) Go to the 10gb share plan. Unlimited talk/text is the big positive. Limiting our data to 10gb the negative, but well within our usage range? The cost per phone on this would be $54 per phone.

Of the 5 phones, 2 will be iPhone 5.

Thoughts? Any would be appreciated!!

hmmm that's odd. I wonder if any kind of data logging is turned on. I turned that off on my phone. Go to general > about > diagnostics and usage.

edit: That was for #1 above.

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... in addition, here's my thought. I don't know if this will work but it was my first thought after reading your post:

For now, up your minutes to what you need to do. Get the data thing straightenend out so you can get a better handle on who's using what data. We assume it will go down.

Once you have an idea of what your combined data use is after making adjustments, then re-visit the idea of a shared data plan.

 

[Photogdave]

Man, those pics are phenominal!

Reminds me... just after I got my 4s, my wife had this brilliant idea to go get baby's pic taken with Santa for a Christmas card. Excellent! So after driving around, finding parking, waiting in the cold, we get in and put her on his lap.

Awwwwkkkward silence ensues. We look at the guy behind the giant camera. He looks at us. We look at santa, he looks at us. We look at the person standing there... they look at us....

"Would you like to take a picture with Santa?" said the one worker...

(my wife and I looking oddly at each other... nodding....)

"yes, that's what we're here for"

"oh well, we don't actually take the pictures for you... we just provide santa and the (shed) that he sits in"

"oh...well... we thought.... (gesturing at the guy behind the camera)...."

"No, he's just here to do a [news piece or something else, I don't remember]"

It hits us that we just drove around looking for parking, stood out in the cold with a 7-month old and now we don't even get our picture.

You can guess how the rest of the story goes... I pull out my new, shiny, 4s and start snapping away. I even gave it to the worker and he took our picture (whole family) for us.

All of which came out GREAT and were used on our Christmas card! I was EXTREMELY happy that the iPhone saved the day!

Ironically, my wife had said before we left "I wonder if they'll let us use our own camera and take the pics. I'd rather do it myself with my camera" She has a.... really stretching here.... Nikkon D3100(??) Does that exist? Whatever it's called, it was like $800 or something...

She second-guessed herself citing that they would NEVER let you take your own pics cause that's how they get their money, selling you pics. We determined that we didn't want it just sitting in the car waiting to be stolen and it was really cold out so we didn't want it sitting out in the cold. We left it at home. little did we know.... ha ha!

Yeah, the 4s has a great camera.....provided its used correctly. So many people just whip it around. Blurry images, gotta be still.

I expect the 5 to be a tad better. Ive said here the last couple days. People are expecting too much from new iPhone's nowadays.
We're at a point right now that most all the huge break through's have come and gone. I like the Passbook.....but thats software, not hardware so.....
Im real happy with the new iPhone(without using it)
Hey they sold 2Million on first day. Whats that say. They cant all be idiots.
We're gonna be getting improvements across all the areas of the phone now.
Each release a little better battery, better processor, better ram, new iOS, better camera etc.
It'll be a few more years before we see anything earth shattering like the when the first iPhone hit.

As for the Nikon, yeah it exists, from what little i know about it, its a great little camera.
But classic example of what i was saying. I use a Canon 1D Mark III.....still. It was released in 2007. Its only 10mp!!!! I paid $4700 for the body only.
But to this day, the image quality is astounding......cause of those great big giant pixels. Its got a sensor thats the size of a compact flash card with only 10 million pixels. Compared to the sensor in a phone thats the size of a finger nail. Lots of room for them in my camera.

 

[Hitch08]

...
So just found out a couple of interesting things:

1) My sister's usage is happening late at night after she goes to bed. Of the 4.4 gb she has used this month 98% is coming when she is asleep. Something is going on here. The phone is plugged in the wall with all apps closed. Going to AT&T to find out what is going on. ONce get that settled, her usage will drop dramatically.
...

Re the portion of your post that I quoted above, AFAIK, AT&T often logs data at night. The time at which the data is logged to her account is not necessarily the time at which she used the data - it is just when the usage was added to the her account.

Regarding the usage, I went through an issue with my wife iPhone. She was blowing through her data plan and the entries were logged to her bill in the middle of the night. My wife, however, wasn't using any of the apps that typically use loads of data. Long story short, after various calls to AT&T and Apple, as well as various internet searches, I had my wife cancel out of a certain App before leaving home (and WiFi). The huge data consumption stopped. The App designer denies that their App has this issue, but that wasn't our experience.

Do some searches on here. There's various posts about the night time data logging.

 

[volntitan]

Is there a way to tell which app might be doing it? I had my sister look at her cellular data usage and she has sent 998 mb of data and received 14.2 gb of data. But when I look at her data usage since may 11 (farthest I could go back) it adds up to a total of 36 gb of data used. So not sure what is going on. I can understand some packets of data at night (even though no one else on the plan is showing that kind of night time activity), but to have 98% of her data usage happen then and her to tell me she occasionally streams a cw show, otherwise she might play a game or two and check her mail...somethign is out of whack.

 

[appleaddict97]

In the confirmation email I recieved, it said that I now had "email and web unlimited," despite the fact that Verizon made me change to their shared data plan. Does that mean that I still have unlimited data?

 

[Hitch08]

Is there a way to tell which app might be doing it? I had my sister look at her cellular data usage and she has sent 998 mb of data and received 14.2 gb of data. But when I look at her data usage since may 11 (farthest I could go back) it adds up to a total of 36 gb of data used. So not sure what is going on. I can understand some packets of data at night (even though no one else on the plan is showing that kind of night time activity), but to have 98% of her data usage happen then and her to tell me she occasionally streams a cw show, otherwise she might play a game or two and check her mail...somethign is out of whack.

My wife's data usage was the opposite. AT&T was logging huge amounts of sent data and small amounts of received data. Do some searches on here and on Google for the apps that she is using. You might find other complaints of high data usage for those apps.

There are certain iOS changes that you can make to reduce usage. For example, disabling the sending of "Diagnostics & Usage".

It was suggested to us that we download an app to monitor usage. We never found an app that was any good at doing so.

We identified the problematic app by having her close all apps running in the background before leaving home (double click the home button and then hold your finger on any running apps - and then hit the small x). For a couple days, she didn't do any texting, messaging or use any apps while not connected to WiFi. There was very limited data usage. I had found an article online about Tap Zoo, an app she was using, which indicated that a business ISP found it used large amounts of data. The app developer denied it. When she used Tap Zoo, away from WiFi, usage went WAY up. After that, she only played Tap Zoo when connected to WiFi and we had no more problems. YMMV.

 

[GravityEyes]

Well after all of that, glad to see others with similar situations and decisions. Beyond the occasional haters I think this thread was very informative.

 

[Leonard1818]

Five star thread

 

[supervelous]

I'm sort of having the same debate with myself. AT&T coverage map didn't show LTE in my area, and customer service said it wasn't here either. So I went ahead and ported my number to Verizon and chose the 5GB plan at $50/month, and said oh well at least I'll have LTE, be able to tether, and use Facetime over 3G. Even those I'd lose my AT&T unlimited data.

Well to my surprise after buying another phone on a separate AT&T line, AT&T does indeed have blazing fast LTE in my area that they do not have updated on their coverage map.

So, I am now left with a dilemma. Since I ported my number, to keep my AT&T and unlimited, I'd have to return the Verizon phone without activating it, and go to Apple or AT&T and upgrade on my main line I guess. Then I'd keep my unlimited data with AT&T, have LTE, and be able to talk and use data at the same time. Also save $20/mo on the unlimited vs the Verizon 5GB plan.

BUT I'd lose the tethering, the facetime over cellular, and the overall more robust and reliable network of Verizon. Plus potentially not get the 5 on day 1, go through the hassle of the return, etc.

 

[pragmatous]

Right if you want to pay for 15 dollars for using 1 extra MB.

Actually you will still be able to do jack squat.
They will just charge you for an extra GB.

 

[CSpackler]

My reasoning is that carriers are moving as many customers as possible off unlimited data so they can eventually increase prices as LTE becomes more ubiquitous. In 5-10 years, who knows what phones will do and how much data they suck down. I will stick with unlimited as long as possible.

In a few years, people will be proud of their grandfathered family shared plan while new customers pay even more. I will be glad I kept my $30 ($25 after fan discount) unlimited plan. Hopefully by then AT&T will have forgotten about us by then and stopped throttling.

 

[iregret]

Do you regret it now?

 

[MattMJB0188]

Do you regret it now?

Why did you resurrect this 2 year old thread? Why, why, why???