Update: Perfect Browser in the app store now has added the feature with the last update to fake the browser as the iPhone safari for less data usage and does not require you to jailbreak your iPad. In addition you can also turn off pictures from loading and use google compression to use less data.
Perfect Browser link
For some data compression with google and turning off images is a great feature. For me I am happy with just replicating the iPhone browser since I only used a max of 900 MG a month on my phone with the sites I visit, but it's better seeing the sites on the iPad screen.
I would recommend this browser even it you have your iPad jailbroken. No need for the addition hack to get the same results and it has other useful features like highlighting key words you want to search for.
I will update the data usage with different features using the browser when I have a chance.
NOTE: The requires your iPad to be jailbroken, I suggest using Spirit for the 3.2 OS.
This has two possibilities.
One, if you have the 3G iPad and you need to watch the amount of data your using then this might be good for you.
Two, you decide to tether from you iphone to your ipad but don't want your carrier to know then this may be for you.
The reasoning behind this change is to make the iPad browser look like its the iPhone browser. This helps the carrier not detect that fact that you are tethering and use less data when you are visiting sites that re-direct you to mobile sites that are less data when they load up in the browser.
If you do not understand any part of the following please search the forum.
Many sites already have instructions like "how to edit a file on the iPad or iPhone"
First: Jailbrake the iPad
Second: Launch Cydia
Third: Search for SBsettings and install it.
Fourth: Search for UAFaker and install it
You will also need to install either SSH or iFile to edit one of the files from UAFaker.
At this point you will need either ssh access so you can VI (edit) a file or if you have iFile you can make changes to the file using iFile.
You now need to edit the following file:
/var/mobile/Library/SBSettings/Toggles/UAFaker/UAFaker.plist
You will see a line that looks like this:
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092414 Firefox/3.0.3</string>
Replace the line above to the following:
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16</string>
The results are...........
During my tests I went to three web sites that detect the browser and direct you to a mobile formatted site that use less data. One was engadget.com, tuaw.com and my bank.*
(you don't need to know who I bank with but they do direct you to a mobile site)
I went to the sites and pulled up the same article on both sites to see how much data was used.
I reset the data counter in the iPhone before every test.
This shows the amount of data used when visiting the sites on the iPad with UAFaker on tethering from the iphone. The sites thought I was browsing from the iPhone mobile safari and directed me to the mobile sites.
Note: I think this is a little more then the phone because my iPad checked the email while I was running this test.
Sent 101 KB
Received 412 KB
This one shows the amount of data when visiting the sites on the iPhone directly.
Sent 113 KB
Received 366 KB
This shows the amount of data used visiting the sites with the iPad browser tethering from the iPhone with the UAFaker off. So the sites detected this as the full iPad browser and loaded the full sites.
Sent 515 KB
Received 3.5 MB
As you can see there is a big difference in the data when using the iPad browser.
Doing something like this could save you money with the iPad data plan or tethering plan.
3.5MG to only about 400kb.
Please note this will not help save data with all sites, just the ones that are formatted to direct you to a mobile site.
If you still want to use limited data but you don't want to jailbreak the iPad then I would suggest buying the "Perfect Browser" from the app store. You can enable google web site compression and even tell the browser not to load pictures or images. Both of these feature will cut back on you data usage.
**I have also asked the developer of "Perfect Browser" to add a feature were it can fake the browser as a mobile iPhone safari browser.
UPDATE: The developer for perfect browser has updated the browser to now fake as it's a iPhone or iTouch browser in the last update. See edited notes at the top of the post.
Perfect Browser link
For some data compression with google and turning off images is a great feature. For me I am happy with just replicating the iPhone browser since I only used a max of 900 MG a month on my phone with the sites I visit, but it's better seeing the sites on the iPad screen.
I would recommend this browser even it you have your iPad jailbroken. No need for the addition hack to get the same results and it has other useful features like highlighting key words you want to search for.
I will update the data usage with different features using the browser when I have a chance.
NOTE: The requires your iPad to be jailbroken, I suggest using Spirit for the 3.2 OS.
This has two possibilities.
One, if you have the 3G iPad and you need to watch the amount of data your using then this might be good for you.
Two, you decide to tether from you iphone to your ipad but don't want your carrier to know then this may be for you.
The reasoning behind this change is to make the iPad browser look like its the iPhone browser. This helps the carrier not detect that fact that you are tethering and use less data when you are visiting sites that re-direct you to mobile sites that are less data when they load up in the browser.
If you do not understand any part of the following please search the forum.
Many sites already have instructions like "how to edit a file on the iPad or iPhone"
First: Jailbrake the iPad
Second: Launch Cydia
Third: Search for SBsettings and install it.
Fourth: Search for UAFaker and install it
You will also need to install either SSH or iFile to edit one of the files from UAFaker.
At this point you will need either ssh access so you can VI (edit) a file or if you have iFile you can make changes to the file using iFile.
You now need to edit the following file:
/var/mobile/Library/SBSettings/Toggles/UAFaker/UAFaker.plist
You will see a line that looks like this:
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092414 Firefox/3.0.3</string>
Replace the line above to the following:
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16</string>
The results are...........
During my tests I went to three web sites that detect the browser and direct you to a mobile formatted site that use less data. One was engadget.com, tuaw.com and my bank.*
(you don't need to know who I bank with but they do direct you to a mobile site)
I went to the sites and pulled up the same article on both sites to see how much data was used.
I reset the data counter in the iPhone before every test.
This shows the amount of data used when visiting the sites on the iPad with UAFaker on tethering from the iphone. The sites thought I was browsing from the iPhone mobile safari and directed me to the mobile sites.
Note: I think this is a little more then the phone because my iPad checked the email while I was running this test.
Sent 101 KB
Received 412 KB
This one shows the amount of data when visiting the sites on the iPhone directly.
Sent 113 KB
Received 366 KB
This shows the amount of data used visiting the sites with the iPad browser tethering from the iPhone with the UAFaker off. So the sites detected this as the full iPad browser and loaded the full sites.
Sent 515 KB
Received 3.5 MB
As you can see there is a big difference in the data when using the iPad browser.
Doing something like this could save you money with the iPad data plan or tethering plan.
3.5MG to only about 400kb.
Please note this will not help save data with all sites, just the ones that are formatted to direct you to a mobile site.
If you still want to use limited data but you don't want to jailbreak the iPad then I would suggest buying the "Perfect Browser" from the app store. You can enable google web site compression and even tell the browser not to load pictures or images. Both of these feature will cut back on you data usage.
**I have also asked the developer of "Perfect Browser" to add a feature were it can fake the browser as a mobile iPhone safari browser.
UPDATE: The developer for perfect browser has updated the browser to now fake as it's a iPhone or iTouch browser in the last update. See edited notes at the top of the post.