Smartphone Link - Garmin Nuvi - Data Usage

[RogerBu]

I have Smartphone Link between my phone and Garmin Nuvi. This is to use Live Traffic updates, weather etc. I haven't used it yet.

I asked a Virgin Media rep how much data this would use. She advised that I would need to have the most expensive tarriff as it would use lots of data.

Some people have said no, it actually uses very little data.

Does anyone use Smartphone Link and know how much data it would use.

Thanks

RogerBu

 

[Rukbat]

The easiest way to find out is to contact Garmin Android.Dev@garmin.com and ask if anyone's measured the amount of data the app draws down, so you can determine which data plan you need. I'm sure they have at least a ballpark figure they can give you.

And I doubt that it's much - weather is a low data user. Traffic reports, if they're just of the "location - amount of delay" type are also low users of data. A full traffic notice probably takes less than a single packet (which is the largest single chunk of data you can send on the internet - a little over 1k). The alternate routing is all done in the GPS receiver itself, do that doesn't cost data. Google Maps probably uses more data to find the location of an address you give it to navigate to.

 

[RogerBu]

Thanks for that reply and also or the link. I will contact them. I'm sure the Virgin Media rep wouldn't deliberately mislead me. More likely I didn't make myself clear.

 

[Unforgiven]

RukBat is right, the developer of the app (Garmin) would be best to answer the data usage. BTW, I moved this to the Android Applications forums.