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How much phone-plan data am I using...

R

radsboy

Member
If I do a moderate amount of email, weather, text chats... and, let's say, spending an hour or two listening to Pandora or a public radio app -

If I do this every day - no extreme use like streaming video all night, just moderate use - how much will I use per month?

I m considering the Verizon 2Gig/month plan. Is that at all realistic?

Thanks...
 
It's going to be close... With "Higher quality audio" on in the settings, Pandora uses approximately 28 MB of data per hour over 3G. 2GB will get you about 71 hours of pandora use per month. If you do two hours of pandora each day the music alone is going to eat up around 1650 of your 2000 megabytes in a month. Not to mention the texting and web browsing.
 
Also keep in mind the double data promotion, since your considering Verizon. If you buy a 4G phone (not sure when promotion ends) you get double data, so that 2gb becomes 4gb which should be plenty for you. What phone do you plan on getting? iPhone is 3G so you cant get double data with it. Youd have to get an Android 4G to get double data.
 
You should be fine. Verizon has a widget you can install that tells you how much data you've used in your billing cycle so you can keep an eye on it. There are third party counters to like Net Counter too. If you are around wifi at home or work, use that and you'll never come close to 2gig or 4. There are apps like Y5 battery saver that switch the wifi on an off for you near your usuall hotspots.
 
Lars said:
You should be fine. Verizon has a widget you can install that tells you how much data you've used in your billing cycle so you can keep an eye on it. There are third party counters to like Net Counter too. If you are around wifi at home or work, use that and you'll never come close to 2gig or 4. There are apps like Y5 battery saver that switch the wifi on an off for you near your usuall hotspots.
Click to expand...
He's correct. I have VZW and got the deal where you pay for 2gb and get 4gb and I haven't hit the 1gb mark yet, and I've had the phone since Dec. Of course I also use wifi when I'm home. While at work I use 3/4g connection and may watch some youtube, stream some music etc but not on an all day basis either.

When I first got my phone I wasn't quite sure how fast one would use 4gb so I was using it carefully but now I'm trying my hardest to use more & more before the month is over. I'm currently on day 10 and have used 510mb of data.
 
I use my phone very much like you do. I stream radio on my way to and from work, check email, texts, facebook, and hit up a web site or ten throughout the day. At home I am on WIFI and have set my Market to auto update on WIFI only. I don't worry about my data usage either as I am lucky to be on unlimited, so I am not careful at all. I usually wind up between 700MB to 1GB of 3G data.

I hope this helps.
 
My cousin worked at Verizon and he said he usually only sees people going over their data limits when they tether their phones and use the internet from there or many, many hours of music streaming. I think if you're going to use your data casually and not really try to max it out, you'll be good!

Texting doesn't count as data usage, that's why there's a separate type of billing for text messages, right?
 
Thank you all for the very encouraging answers. I recently got a used HTC Eris and have been using it at home and work for a wifi device, and I am liking it a lot. This forum is a great resource!

Best to all...
 
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