Google Play Store and S5 Eating Data Like it's its Job

[Ambrose99]

Anyone else having this issue? I have only started using the Galaxy S5 for a few days, coming from a Nokia Lumia 900. The 900, yes it's Win Phone, but WinPhones are very "efficient" about their use. Fewer button presses, lots of apps baked in that you don't need to download, etc, and not a lot of background data flowing. In a month, I may have used 1 GB off wi-fi, and that was with moderate/heavy open mobile use.

However, after a few days, the Google Play store is out of control on data usage. Having had Android before, I first shut down auto-update of apps, and set it to only update apps over Wi-fi. I also made sure that wi-fi/tower hybrid setting was off, too. Then I made sure every app I had was set to only do stuff over wi-fi, and checked that each individual auto-update setting wasn't overridden. (in other words, I ain't no noob)

And yet, after 2 days, the Google Play store alone, with all those settings off, chomped up about 200MB by itself. I then killed all background data, too, to stop it's hunger, which has seemed to work.

As a test, I just turned background data on, opened the Play Store, searched for an app or two, and shut it down.... 20MB used. 20! For... what? Searching? Pictures of apps?

Play Store is not the only offender, mind you, and overall the S5 seems like it has a data eating problem. I have a 4GB shared plan with my wife, and after 4 days, it's eaten 500MB on VERY LIGHT MOBILE USE. I'm afraid to even use my phone for fear of going way over.

Aside from just killing data entirely, and other things I've done above (restrict background data, no auto-update unless on wifi), what are some suggestions to put a dam in the river of data this thing wants to consume?

P.S. - 72 MB for my Twitter app?! 72?! What the heck is this thing doing?!

 

[axel_2078]

I would like to know the answer to your questions too because my wife and I also have a 4 GB shared plan and right now are are sitting at 3.65 GB and our cycle doesn't start over until the 25th (3 days from now). In our case, over 1 GB of this came from about 2.5 hours of our son streaming videos from my wife's hotspot on her new HTC One M8, which we abruptly stopped when we noticed it.

 

[Rukbat]

I'm guessing that it's updating a lot of system apps that you can't set to not autoupdate. It's a "new" phone, but the apps (both user and system) were baked in months ago. And I know from personal experience that there have been tons of updates in the past couple of months. (Which is why I've done the same thing - only update the apps I use and ask before updating. A couple of apps won't work in my setup if I update them. My cable Tv app, for example, now isn't fooled by Xposed's "Im not in debug mode" trick, so I'm still on the old one. And don't ask about Google Maps. It looks like they have a special downgrading team to make it worse every time.)

Let everything upgrade - on wifi. 24/7. It'll probably take a few days to settle down. We've seen this with a lot of new Android phones. (Kit Kat on the Note 3 ate battery like crazy for a few days according to some. I wouldn't know. 4.4.2 gets on this phone after I'm dead. Or we get root and a full Safestrap for it.)

 

[Ambrose99]

Thanks. Yeah, that's essentially what I'm hoping for, too, that it's just waiting for the moment when I give it the okay to just open the floodgates, and sneaking in moments when I'm not looking. I've even going so far as to restrict overall "sync" entirely until I come back home to my wifi network, and then letting it go nuts (thankfully, ISP data is unlimited, but who knows for how long until that changes, too).

I hope it does calm down eventually. I really would like to not be afraid to use it.

Also, sidenote, I have AT&T, and have been regularly using their *DATA# feature to check usage, and it is corresponding closely to what the internal program says.

I'm just so shocked, coming from sleek, efficient Windows, to still see all this bloat. I love Android, too, but this new S5 has been quite a headache.

 

[Rukbat]

Well ... a lot of the bloat can be frozen or uninstalled. (I prefer freezing in case I lose my mind and decide I need something I froze). But how easy is it to modify a Wndows phone? Say to have not just dual boot, but quintuple boot? (I blew the phone last week by flashing something in the wrong place. No panic, just boot, restore a couple of ROMs and kick myself for wasting 5 minutes.)

Personally, I'm more recently familiar with .Nuts than with Java, but the choice of phones isn't there, and I don't see WM grabbing enough market share to have many native apps, so I'd have to write everything I needed myself. At almost 72, I don't think I'd live long enough for that. And ROMs? Who's writing ROMs for Windows Mobile? Microshaft is trying to get an easy port path for Android apps so they have some apps to sell their phones for. Chicken and egg - there are no developers developing Windows apps, so no one is buying the phones, so the developers have no customers so they aren't writing apps ...

Android went through it at the beginning. If Nadella can hold out, and maybe put an app team together in-house, they may yet make smartphones a 3-way race. Otherwise, BB and WM are the 'dumb' smartphones.

 

[Mittar]

This definitely is not normal. If it's downloading and updating apps, fine, plug it in and let it do it over night on wifi, but it shouldn't be constantly sucking down data. I'm sure you've already tried it, but do a battery pull for a hard reboot, and see if it's any different.