MidwayClass5Sept242010

Data Usage Explained

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The following and more can be found on CNET.com. CNET is my favorite source to TECH NEWS because it is
timely and accurate. Being an ex English teacher and ex TV producer/editor I took the privelege of editing the
article to make in more concise for students with busy schedules. If you want the whole article go to
www. news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20077479-266/no-unlimited-data-plan-help-faq/

... unlimited data plans for smartphones are going the way of the
dinosaur... .

... smartphone owners can still stream all the video they want,
tweet constantly, and send dozens of pictures to friends and
family all day long, so long as they do it smarter and more
efficiently.

...
CNET has put together this handy FAQ to help wireless
subscribers get the most of their data plans--everything from
using Wi-Fi to turning off apps that run in the background to
installing apps that compress data and help people keep track of
usage.

What's the best way to conserve data?
Using Wi-Fi hot spots is the best way to reduce the amount of
cellular data you use each month. Downloading apps, checking
Facebook, surfing the Web or even watching Netflix on your mobile
phone or tablet while connected to a Wi-Fi hot spot won't count
toward your monthly allotment of data from your wireless provider,
because you've offloaded the data consumption onto a different
network.
So when you can, log onto a Wi-Fi hot spot. At home and in the office
are the most obvious places to get Wi-Fi. But increasingly, Wi-Fi is
also offered outside. Wireless carriers and broadband providers are
starting to set up Wi-Fi hot spots in public areas. For example, AT&T
offers free Wi-Fi to smartphone subscribers in public places such
as Starbucks and in several parks in New York City. The company
has also established a Wi-Fi hotzone in New York City's Times
Square.

Related stories:
•... So consumers, who are concerned about their mobile data
consumption need to consider how they can use wireless data
more efficiently.
Where should I start in my effort to use my data service more
efficiently?
The first thing you should do is take an inventory of the apps that
are on your smartphone. Look through the settings on all your apps.
See which ones consume data in the background, such as weather
apps or news apps. These apps tend to automatically refresh every
few minutes to give you up-to-date information. If you hardly ever
check those apps, you can delete them.
If you don't want to delete those apps, you can turn off the auto
background updates. You can update the weather or news apps
manually.

What other settings should I consider changing to conserve data?
You can also turn off auto-sync on your phone. This way your email
or contact information won't be automatically pushed to you. You can
refresh e-mail messages manually.

You may also want to turn off the auto-update function for apps
that offer that as an option. Instead, wait until you are in a Wi-Fi hot
spot to update your apps over the air. This is especially problematic
for Android users, because app downloads can be more than 20MB
a pop. By contrast Apple limits large app downloads to Wi-Fi or side-
loading using a computer.

Which type of smartphone uses more data: the Apple iPhone or
Google Android devices?
That's hard to say since it really depends on how subscribers use
these phones. But a recent Nielsen survey indicates that Android
smartphone users typically consume more data than iPhone
subscribers. Android subscribers on average consume about
582MB per month, and an average iPhone user consumes about
492MB. Part of the reason may be because Android users simply
use their phones more.

But this difference may also be because Android allows users to
download bigger app files over the cellular network. Meanwhile,
Apple requires that apps over a certain size be downloaded only
over Wi-Fi or when it's connected directly to a computer. Apple also
requires that certain apps only be used in Wi-Fi hot spots, such as
the video chat app FaceTime.

I know I can check my data usage by going to my carrier's Web site
and logging into my account. But are there any mobile apps that I
can download on my phone to help me manage this better?
Yes, there are several apps that can be used to do this. An app
called 3G Watchdog for Android phones allows you to watch your
data usage and set alerts. The free app allows you to set a data limit
for the month, and when you approach that threshold, it sends you
an alert. It also has a widget that allows you to see your usage
without opening the app. And if you use the app with another app
called APNdroid, which prevents you from accessing the cellular
data network, 3G Watchdog can turn off your mobile data
automatically before you reach your limit.

DataMan and DataMan Pro are apps available for iOS devices
(Apple) that monitor your data usage every 10 minutes. The app
compiles your daily, weekly, and monthly data usage. You can view
your usage across different days in a chart and even zoom in to see
hourly details on usage.

Another app called Onavo can tell you how much data each app
you're running consumes. This free app is currently available only
for iOS devices.

.
Which apps consume the most data?
Streaming media such as video and audio typically eat up the most
data each month. According to Verizon's data calculator, if you
stream music for 1 hour a day every day of the month, you'll hit the
2GB threshold. If you watch 1 hour of high-resolution video every day
on your phone, you will rack up over 10GB of data per month. Even
30 minutes of high-resolution video every day will take your usage to
about 5GB per month. And 2 minutes of low-resolution video every
day of the month will get you to the 2GB limit pretty quickly. By
contrast, watching 30 minutes a day of low-resolution video will eat
up about 690MB of data per month.

Here's a little guide put together by Verizon to give you an idea of
how much data certain activities eat up:
Email (text only) = 10KB
Typical Web Page Lookup* = 1.5MB
Audio Streaming = 40MB/hr
Low-Resolution Video Streaming = 200MB/hr
High-Resolution Video Streaming = 400MB/hr
Digital Photo download/upload (Hi-Res) = 1MB

* Can exceed 2 MB with graphically intense pages or with video.
What other apps or online activity should I watch carefully?

While streaming apps are data hogs, .... other activities, such as
using Twitter, checking Facebook, or even downloading mobile
Web pages actually can consume more data per month in
aggregate than streaming video or audio, said Guy Rosen, CEO
and co-founder Onavo, the creator of the app that reports how much
data each app you're using consumes. And the reason is simple.
Some people may not watch video on their phones that often, but
they check these other apps constantly. And all those downloads
add up.

Rosen said it's especially important to choose the apps you use
most often wisely. For example, there are several apps that allow
you to view and update your Twitter account. There's TweetDeck,
which is now owned by Twitter, Echofon, HootSuite, Twitterrific,
TweetBot, and several others, including the official Twitter iPhone
app.

But some of these iPhone apps consume more data than others.
For instance, TweetDeck is the most efficient, whereas the official
Twitter client for the iPhone is the least efficient. Twitter for the
iPhone consumes more than double the data compared to
TweetDeck. And yet 65 percent of Twitter users use the official
Twitter app on their iPhone. And only 8 percent use the TweetDeck
app.

Are there any mobile apps that can actually make me consume
less data?

Yes, the Onavo app redirects Internet traffic bound for your iPhone or
iPad and compresses it before it's delivered to the device. Rosen
says that it can reduce data usage by as much as 80 percent by
compressing the data in the "cloud."

Using the app is very easy. You simply turn it on and it operates in
the background. The rerouting and data compression happen
automatically. After you have used Onavo, you can go back and view
how much data you've saved. The app quickly puts together a
graphic that tells you how many kilobytes (or megabytes) that you've
saved.

There are some limitations to Onavo. For now, it's only available for
iOS (Apple) devices. But a version of the app is being developed for
Android smartphones, and the company will begin testing it soon.
Eventually, the company will also have versions for all smartphones,
including Windows Phone 7 devices. And the other big limitation is
that today it doesn't compress video and audio streaming, but that is
also something that will be added later, Rosen said.
The Opera Mini Browser for the iPhone and Android devices also
compresses data. This not only helps Web pages load more
quickly, but it reduces the amount of data you're using when you surf
the Net on your smartphone.

Does compression technology hurt the quality of the content
you're downloading?
Yes, it can affect the quality of the file that is compressed. It's most
noticeable with Web images, which can look pixilated after they are
compressed. But the Onavo app can be turned off for downloading
pictures if you need a higher-quality image.
I'm glad there are apps and tools to help me keep track of all of this.
But how concerned do I really need to be that I will go over my 2GB
cap?

... 9 5 percent of current Verizon Wireless customers use less than
2GB a month. A company called Xigo, a free cloud-based service
that analyzes wireless bills and recommends instant savings to
subscribers, recently ran an audit of its own data on 250,000
devices under management. And it discovered that the average
wireless data customer uses only 13 percent of their monthly cap.

So for most people, there is plenty of headroom available.
But people are using more data. In the past 12 months, average
data usage has grown by 89 percent in a year, according to data
from Nielsen. In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone customers
on average consumed 230MB of data. Twelve months later, they
were using on average 435MB in the first quarter of 2011.

Data consumption grew even faster for the heaviest data users.
Nielsen found that data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone
users, or the 90th percentile, is up 109 percent. And the top 1
percent, or the 99th percentile, has grown their usage by 155
percent from 1.8GB in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6GB in the
second quarter of 2011.

For now, most consumers should be fine even if they have to get a
tiered data plan.....
Written by and published for CNET
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004,
covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net
neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone
companies.

Below is an article I clipped from the Lexington Herald Leader.
Sorry have no other citation information.

The article tells you how much data you send or receive with
various apps on a smart phone.