Smartphone - data usage?

[Alexandra]

I need some thoughts on how much data one can really use in a month on a wireless plan. I finally gave in and upgraded my phone to a HTC Thunderbolt. I started to get concerned after I placed the order, because Verizon doesn't have unlimited data plans.

I went for the 4GB add-on, so my question is, does anyone ever really reach this limit and if so, how much usage does this give you? I really don't plan on streaming any movies or videos on my phone, maybe downloading a few apps would be my extent of usage for now.

Any thoughts?

 

[devestator]

If all you are doing is browsing the web and downloading a few apps you don't run much risk of hitting the cap.

If you listen to streaming music a LOT, you might run a risk of hitting the cap. A friend of mine listened to music for 2 to 3 hours a day on average once to test and he would have ended up transferring 4 or 5 gigs if he had done it for the entire month.

If you want to watch netflix or youtube a lot, 4 gigs will go pretty fast. I watched 3 episodes of star trek voyager over my 4G the other day (I have the thunderbolt too by the way, but I have unlimited data) and used up 1.7 gigs for those 3 episodes. Granted I watched them on my laptop connected through a wifi hotspot on my phone, if you watched them on the android netflix app, I believe it scales them down to a lower quality and would not transfer as much, but it would still be a pretty large amount for only just over 2 hours of video.

 

[jamie75]

keep your wifi on at home, helps a lot

 

[jodwop]

I hit about 2.3 gigs avg a month streaming music 5 days a week to and from work for about 90 mins a day. Through out the day certain push type apps update. And as I get home I swap to wifi. There are other programs to do this, but Verizon has Verizon Wifi Auto-on and you can set it up to swap wifi on/off by determining your location and it has worked perfectly since I installed it.

 

[twizzops]

My Verizon charge never stays "charged" long enough for me to stream anything without it being plugged in. My biggest regret purchase of 2011.

Anyways, I never reach 2GB of data on my phone with just emails, apps and some web browsing. If that's all you are going to use your phone for, you will never reach the data limit. If you start streaming music or movies you eventually will. You can also keep up with your data usage on your phone as well.

As others have said, if you use your home, work, or public WIFI it will use that instead of your 3 or 4G carrier network, which is also a good way to limit your data usage.

 

[Alexandra]

Thanks guys, I feel much better now
It seems based on feedback, I should be ok.

 

[dulak]

I've got a droid through T-Mobile and I use the unlimited everything setup. Yea it's prepaid but I spend 53 a month and don't have to worry about anything.

 

[Rasmussenn]

Just watch your My Verizon page, or do the command to check data from your phone. Also, I believe Verizon will send you an alert via txt or email when you hit 50% data usage (It's configurable from within the My Verizon page too)

 

[rob]

If you use Google Music, you can set your cell phone up to 'cache' songs locally. That may help as well.

 

[JimJohnson]

My Verizon charge never stays "charged" long enough for me to stream anything without it being plugged in. My biggest regret purchase of 2011.

Anyways, I never reach 2GB of data on my phone with just emails, apps and some web browsing. If that's all you are going to use your phone for, you will never reach the data limit. If you start streaming music or movies you eventually will. You can also keep up with your data usage on your phone as well.

As others have said, if you use your home, work, or public WIFI it will use that instead of your 3 or 4G carrier network, which is also a good way to limit your data usage.

Broke my Droid X faceplate bought a Droid X2 ( 4 days before Razr came back out)

On my second X2 already its lived in an otterbox since the day i bought the x2. I experience same issue with battery life.

 

[bob1870]

i use my phone a lot lot. i stream movies about 9 hours a day at work.i avarge about a gig every 2 days. att has been since slowing me down every month but i dont care it makes some buff issues and stuff but cant beat watching tv at work all day.

 

[devestator]

i use my phone a lot lot. i stream movies about 9 hours a day at work.i avarge about a gig every 2 days. att has been since slowing me down every month but i dont care it makes some buff issues and stuff but cant beat watching tv at work all day.

A gig for 18 hours of streaming? That would have to be some exceptionally low video quality.... I think even standard resolution 720 x 480 will eat up quite a bit more than that =/

What is your secret to such low data usage streaming and actually being able to see more than one huge pixelated blob?

EDIT: in fact I just used a streaming bandwidth calculator, even 360 x 240 (half standard) with little motion in the video will eat up about 17.1 MB a minute or right at 1 gig per hour.

 

[Arcanems]

Just watch your My Verizon page, or do the command to check data from your phone. Also, I believe Verizon will send you an alert via txt or email when you hit 50% data usage (It's configurable from within the My Verizon page too)

Verizon does this. It's pretty easy to keep track of your usage. When you start running low on anything, they send you courtesy texts. =D

 

[Bladees1739]

I average on a month about 25gigs. My phone is my internet. Where i live the choices are dial up sat or cell phone. I hook directly into my phone i dont use the wifi.

 

[bob1870]

hell if i know could be they have slowed me down thqat much i hadent checked it till they started whining that im in the top 5% from what there thing says i used about 12 to 14 gig a month and im at work about 9 hours. netflix is normally on like i said i tend to buffer a lot when i start using it alot but as far was what im using i couldnt tell u i just know how much i use it.

 

[Lackey]

keep your wifi on at home, helps a lot

I had to learn that the hard way

 

[Alexandra]

Thanks for the feedback, it's looking good so far. Although I've been thinking about streaming music

I have had the phone 5 days and my usage is at 0.402 GB/4 GB.

I've downloaded about 12 + apps (wow they have apps for everything!!!!)

Surfed the web, linked my emails to pull up coupons at the store, so far doing everything I need to do and I seem OK. Although unlimited data is really probably the way to go, I would probably never need it.

 

[homeydc29]

i 2 box with my 4G wifi.

 

[homeydc29]

i 2 box with my 4G wifi hotspot thingy, i was nervous it wouldnt be good enuff too play EQ on but i tried it one day when my net was down hhehe , next thing you know iam 2 boxin with it without a roblem i also raid with it quite often.