iPhone data - how not to blow your limit

[Muds]

Hello all, as a soon to be iPhone owner (waiting for my current contract to end in a fortnight) I wanted to pick your brains about how best to track your iPhone data usage.

I'm in Australia and looking at a plan with 700mb paid data per month (we unfortunately can't get unlimited data plans that I can find), yet want to make sure I don't blow it all in a fortnight...

A couple of questions I'm hoping you current iPhoners may be able to answer:
1. What do you think the recommended amount of data per month for "normal-moderate" use is?
2. Is there an app available to tell you how much data you've used per month/stop data transmission over 3G once you've reached a limit - I know you can see the data used in the iPhone settings, but does this reset itself if the phone is off?
3. Can you turn your 3G data off and just use wifi (or will the phone automatically do it? - I know you can turn the 3G off to save power)

Thanks for the help! Looking forward to getting my new iPhone in 2 weeks!

 

[Bearxor]

I've been using WinMo devices for a while and am definitely a normal to moderate data user. The one thing I don't do is stream a lot of video or radio. Some months are better than others in that regard.

In a month where I pretty much do nothing but surf web sites I use about 150MB. Now, the iPhone, because of the browser will probably use a little bit more data-wise. I think if you limit yourself to web browsing and some light maps usage, you should be able to stay under 700MB. Hopefully your provider has a site that updates your data usage every 24 hours or so. Just keep an eye on it.

I don't know if there is an app that will keep track of your data in real time. This should be pretty easy to make and there are several for Windows devices. When you're connected to a WiFi network, the iPhone automatically senses it and uses it to send data out instead of the cellular connection.

 

[Macjames]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

can't you use the sent and recieved data stats under settings to moniter it or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

 

[macbookhamburg]

yeah just use the Usage meter in the settings menu.... and reset it every firt of the month or something... but really it think if you are a regular user 700mb should be rather hard t blow ...

 

[dmanes]

i'm a heavy user of my iphone, i use the web every day plus email and music and all that, and i had never reach 700mb in a month, you can check your usage by going to settings/general/usage and scrolling to the bottom of the page, there it will tell you your network data, just remember to reset it every month. hope this helps

 

[aneftp]

Hello all, as a soon to be iPhone owner (waiting for my current contract to end in a fortnight) I wanted to pick your brains about how best to track your iPhone data usage.

I'm in Australia and looking at a plan with 700mb paid data per month (we unfortunately can't get unlimited data plans that I can find), yet want to make sure I don't blow it all in a fortnight...

A couple of questions I'm hoping you current iPhoners may be able to answer:
1. What do you think the recommended amount of data per month for "normal-moderate" use is?
2. Is there an app available to tell you how much data you've used per month/stop data transmission over 3G once you've reached a limit - I know you can see the data used in the iPhone settings, but does this reset itself if the phone is off?
3. Can you turn your 3G data off and just use wifi (or will the phone automatically do it? - I know you can turn the 3G off to save power)

Thanks for the help! Looking forward to getting my new iPhone in 2 weeks!

That's sucks you do not have unlimited data in Australia. Anyways, you can turn on the wifi function without using EDGE/3g. I actually prefer Wifi over 3g anytime. On my old iphone with EDGE and usually never used more than 300MB each month of data (and I consider myself a pretty heavy user).

You can disable 3G and default to EDGE only.

As long as you do not stream video or music, you should be fine. the iphone has a data counter that you can use to track you usage and you can reset it anytime.

 

[netfreak]

If you are having a jailbroken device you can try the new cydia app (data counter)

allows you to keep track of cellular data with nice graphs/report

 

[eastercat]

You may want to avoid push e-mail. Check every hour or manually instead.
Limit youtube viewing.
Avoid streaming music or video.
Don't use your iphone as your sole method of web searching. You should only use it when you are away from home.

Because you've got 700MB to play with, you can experiment with your usage. For example, one month you can see what happens when you use push e-mail. Once you've got a better feel for how much data everything uses, you'll be able to optimize your data usage.

FYI: when I go on vacation, my data usage shoots up. Take precautions when you go on vacation.

 

[SLC Flyfishing]

In response to your question about WiFi, yes you can turn on the WiFi receiver in the phone and it will attempt to connect you to a WiFi network over a 3G network whenever that option is available. It also learns your commonly used networks and their passwords if you want it to so that you don't have to manually log in.

Here's my example of data useage:

I ride a commuter train to school everyday, it has WiFi. So I generally do a lot of news reading in the mornings on my iPhone. It's 3G while I wait for the train to arrive, then either WiFi or 3G on the train (depending on the status of the train's admittedly spotty WiFi), once I'm at my University it's WiFi all afternoon for anything I need it for (our campus has amazing WiFi service). Then I ride the trains home and call it a day. I'd say I've spent a few hours a day reading news/macrumors/checking and sending emails etc. Sometimes one or two of those on 3G. I've had my phone for 3 weeks now and I'm at 553.5 MB of data so far. WiFi doesn't count of course.

I never stream video or music over 3G. I save those for times where I can get WiFi.

I think that with some careful effort, 700MB will be more than enough for you. Especially once the newness of the phone wears off, and you're less inclined to spend an inordinate amount of time on it.

SLC