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Help Background app downloading much data while idle

B

bjoernbertelsen

Newbie
Hi, I have a problem.

Luckily I have the "NetCounter" network traffic counter installed, so I monitor my data usage over the 3g/2g network.

Recently I've discovered my usage have increased massively. According to the month graph I've jumped from average 8 MB/day to approx 40 MB/day and my habbits haven't changed!

This morning when I woke up, and my phone has been idle all night, it had already used 7MB since midnight - without me using it. What kind of a background app/service downloads that much data? According to my netcounter it is almost 99% download and 1% upload.

I have a 1gb/month dataplan which should be enough, but something is appearently abusing my connection, and with 410MB used this month so far, it can't last all month this way.

I can see which date more or less the cell usage have increased, but I honestly can't recall which programs I have installed around that point!

So before I try randomly uninstalling programs, I would like to hear if there is any way I can see how the network usage is distributed between the apps, so I can find the sinners?

Thanks in advance.
 
You could see what apps are using the most battery:
menu > settings > about phone > battery use

Not sure if it works like this but if an app is downloading stuff, I would think it would be using some battery to do it.

Otherwise, places to start would be anything that would have a reason to update regularly like podcast apps, twitter, weather, and sports score apps.
 
milrtime83:

I can't seem to find the mentioned under menu > settings > about phone

I have a choice of status, legal info and system selfstudy (my phone is in danish language, so not sure if my translation is exactly the correct used terms in english).

Under status I get some info on the battery, but only wether or not its charging, how much battery left, and some network details.

I'm running android 1,5 on my HTC Hero.
 
Today I have only used about 6MB of data, so it seems like something I've done have worked. Yesterday i uninstalled most of the programs I recall to have installed recently, including:

Mabilo wallpapers
Song storm lite free
Flingtap done
and 2-3 others I have forgotten what was (didn't need them that much appearently lol)

I've also disabled/removed the facebook status widget.

This seems to have worked!
 
Hi, I'm new to the forum.

My father is having the same problem with his HTC Hero. Every night at midnight it downloads between 7 and 15 Mb of data. We thought at first it must be a downloaded app but looking at the itemised bill it appears it has been doing it since the day he got it, long before he downloaded any apps. Unfortunately he has had to resort to turning off the data connection as his last 2 bills have been over
 
Like Klaymen, I'd look to the Facebook app as being the problem.
SRB, check your father's phone setting to see what might be set to automatically update (Facebook?). If he doesn't need that update then turn it off. On MY phone (HTC Eris) I found that disabling the built in weather app did a lot of good. I don't 'do' Facebook, so that's turned off on my phone also.
 
Mhotovec, thanks for the reply. He doesn't use Facebook but I will have a look at the weather app. I imagine it must be more than just one app though with that volume of data every day.
 
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