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Help Ridiculous android OS data use

getsoutthere said:
I realize this is an ancient thread now but I couldn't agree more that there is something seriously wrong with this. I went from a Windows phone to my first Android less than a month ago. I had a 2GB data plan and assumed nobody really needed much more than that but literally four days after I got my Android I started having to pay for data overages. Within a week I'd used 4GB. That's *before* I had set up any google accounts, phone backups, anything. Google Play services hogs so much bandwidth I literally am switching back to Windows. There is no way to shut it up. I thought at first it just needed to update existing apps, so I gave it some time, but I'm getting data overage messages again.
What an absolutely ridiculous way to run a system.
If there's a way to extract Google from Android I'm all ears, if anyone is still monitoring this thread.
Click to expand...

Yes there is, I live in place where most smart-phones are Android and Google is banned. As for Google Play Services using data, I don't know, it's not something I've seen.

You say "switching back to Windows"? on a smart-phone, or on your PC? Because AFAIK Windows Phone has been long discontinued. And your only alternative for Android in a new smart-phone, is iOS in iPhones.
 
You are correct, Windows phone is discontinued, and I'm still having trouble adjusting to the fact that basically android is just one huge advertisement that is constantly exchanging data (and an eye opener - I received a notification saying I had turned off my notifications when I got sick of being notified about every single thing that happened on my device) that I have very little control over. I really want to switch back but maps and browsers that are still compatible with WP are hard to find.
I don't need google for anything but maps. How can I get it off my Android 6 device? Most of the data overage is for "Google services", whatever the hell that is. There's so little space left on my device already that it can't even open images in a gallery. I'm replying to this on my windows phone through WiFi.
Not an Android fan, thinking of iOs but that doesn't impress me much either.
Thanks for the reply.
 
Funny thing is that Google Play Services uses very little data on my phone (which is a Pixel, so came with all Google services). So what might be different?

One thing I always do is turn off automatic updates in the Play Store (I update apps manually). I don't use Google Assistant so I disable the Google app (means I don't have access to search widgets or voice search, but I don't want either of those). In fact I disable any system apps I don't use (it shouldn't let you disable anything genuinely important, though it will warn you about dire consequences whenever you disable things). Depending on which android version you have you should be able to go into the system Settings and limit the ability of apps to use data in the background (i.e. when you aren't using them on screen).

It's very hard to say at a distance what's going on with your phone, but GB per day is not normal. In fact my wife's phone uses only a couple of hundred MB most months, and my data usage is almost entirely from foreground use of my apps rather than system usage. So it is definitely not the case that Android intrinsically uses data at the rate you see.

Google Play Services is a bit of a catch-all app: it sits in the background and provides a lot of services used by other apps. Without rooting the phone you can't get rid of it, and I'd be careful if you don't want to break Maps in the process.

What you say about "not having enough space to open the gallery" is nothing to do with data usage. I don't know what phone you have but fear it may be one of those inadequately-specced things that some manufacturers sell to the unwary (16GB storage or less, 2GB RAM or less). Even then not being able to open images is one I've not heard of before.
 
Hi, thanks for that. I was not correct in including that my gallery would not open due to lack of space. That's a a ROM thing, but it is the result of google downloading so much that disappears into the gaping maw of "Google Services," so it's not accurate of me to say it's all google play but it is relevant since my data usage tells me google has used 3.63GB in the background despite me disabling it.
I think I'm just ao dismissive of its inefficiency that I didn't take the time to be precise.
I have version 6.01. When I got the phone, it showed 3GB more or less used by the OS and native apps. Within four days that had swelled to 7.8. I do understand that an 8GB phone is not enough but I kid you not, I took two pictures and downloaded four apps that all totaled less than 500mb. So what consumed the remaining space is, according to the data usage screen, Google Services, without permission.
 
I'm still a bit confused: it seems that we are mixing up space used on the device with data (Internet) usage. It would be better to talk about these things separately, as there is no necessary connection between the two.

For storage, if you could post a screenshot of the storage usage (your system Settings should be able to show what is used) that would help us understand what's going on there.

But I thought you'd just got the phone: android 6 is a 2015 operating system. It's also, Ironically, the only version released in the last decade that I've never used (my 2013 devices topped out at 5, my next phone came with 8, and I've since put 7 on my older phone, but never had an android 6 device).
 
The connection between storage space and bandwidth is that I received data overage charges due to excess bandwidth usage, which the phone was using to download something that took up over 4GB of storage space without my knowledge or permission. The phone tells me that "Google services" is the culprit. When I open an image, the phone attemps to open it in Gallery, but instead it displays the message, 'There is not enough space to open this app,' which is what I was referring to in my original post.

It is indeed an older version of Android, and the phone itself is not exactly a superstar either (1GB RAM, 8GB ROM), but it shouldn't be as useless as it is. I have a 32GB card to load apps and images onto. The phone is new as in never used, but not new as in a recent model (a Samsung J1 2016).

"Google Services" has used 3.84GB in the last couple of weeks. The term "Miscellaneous" is at the top of the list, at 3.75GB. Second to that is "Location", at 0.76MB in the background and 600k in the foreground, an enormous discrepancy in usage.

Whatever Google means by "Miscellaneous" is creepy and needs to leave.
 
But there's no necessary connection between internet usage and space usage because most of what a phone downloads is not stored long term. So we'll need to know how the storage is being used in order to address the space problem, which seems to be the really critical problem.

And I'm afraid that 1GB RAM, 8GB storage (it's not ROM, even if some marketing person writes that on a box) is below the minimum for an android phone to be usable as a smartphone, and frankly was below the minimum even in 2016. Regardless of the mystery of what's been downloaded or generated, you will endlessly struggle with that: half of your storage will be used by the system, and even simple things like web browsing will rapidly eat what's left - many apps keep a "cache" of temporary files, and web browsers, social media apps etc can easily cache hundred of MB each. A few of those and you'll be having to clear the app caches every few days to keep the phone from complaining it is out of storage. In fact looking at your apps (sorted by size ideally - you may have that option in the "app manager") and clearing their caches might be worth a try anyway.
 
Thank you, indeed I have used the inbuilt tools for clearing cache and unused files. In my initial post I said the phone came to me with about 3GB in use for the OS and native apps, and I loaded about 500MB worth of apps. Over the next few days the phone chewed up 4GB of bandwidth downloading something which ended up stored on the phone. That is the problem. Even if the phone had 32GB of internal storage I would still have been charged data overages.
Obviously the culprit is Google Services and I am looking for a way to remove it. The phone is not a state of the art device and if something goes wrong rooting it I'm okay with that. Any direction on how to get rid of Google off the phone is welcome.
 
Try using the free NoRoot Firewall app in the PS to deny all google services' internet accesses (both data and wifi) and see what happens...
 
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