Hey everyone,
Last month I gave a TP2 as a gift to a relative of mine, who is not the most tech savvy. Now, after having been in use for a month, my relative complained about an unsually high phone bill. So I checked it out, and it turns out that the phone used just short of 400 MB in a single month!!! The itemised bill showed that the phone sent or received several megabytes (usually around 4 MB) during times, when the noone was using it (like the middle of the night, 5 in the morning and so on).
The following services were enabled on the phone, that potentially use data:
- Automatic downloading of weather data
- Push notifications for Windows Live Hotmail (
- Windows Update
- Windows Customer Feedback Program
I've now disabled all of the above. Nevertheless, I have to say that blocks of 4 MB without actual use seem pretty excessive. I get push emails on my phone with Google Mail and I never have any more than a couple hundred kilobytes a month. And things like the Customer Feedback Program shouldn't use any data at all (if i recall the dialog explaining the service correctly).
Does anyone have any idea what could be the cause of all this? I actually feel bad for giving someone a phone that causes an astronomical phone bill without having been used excessively. Do you think my relative has some chance of getting at least part of the bill refunded?
Thanks for your input.
Easy.
Just delete the t-mobile setting under connection.
Or change the server to epc.1tmobile.com
Done!
Thank for the input, but I'm sorry to say that that does not actually apply in this case. It is a generic HTC Touch Pro 2, bought in Germany, running on the E-Plus network. Deleting the internet settings all together is not an option, since the phone is supposed to be able to go online (eg. to check stock quotes).
What I'm really wondering is:
- What, out of the services I mentioned, would use up such rediculous amounts of data for no aparent reason?
- How much data do other users see, who do not go online with their phone all day long?
PS: I forgot to mention that Google Latitude was also engabled at some point in time, but was then disabled on account of the fact that it does not update the location when the phone is in standby, and is thus, utterly useless.
Is there some kind of data service on that line? Is this a prepaid line or a post paid(monthy bill). The bill for this overage shows what? Does it show a charge per mb?
A program like SPB wireless monitor can report usage split between which applications are using the data. I don't know whether the trial version would be good enough to get to the bottom of this, but even paying for the full version would be worthwhile if it saves the big bills.
I agree that this is a very large amount of data for the phone to be using by itself!
Did you use Google Maps?
Edit: If not, I would definitely install spb wireless monitor.
xanthene said:
- How much data do other users see, who do not go online with their phone all day long?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I go online with Exchange push, Gmail every 4 hours, Hotmail push, weather, web browsing, facebook, upload pictures, etc
and my monthly useage are around 100-150MB on average.
User who are not go online with their phone all day would be much less than my usage.
Check if she has websites set to push during those times.
Hey everyone,
The phone is on a prepaid plan, but it shows you very exactly how much data was used when.
By now I am fairly confident that the problem lies with Windows Live and Hotmail push notifications. I have in the meantime reactivated the Windows feedback thing (after all, we all benefit from the information I submit to MS ) and have not noticed any additional data charges. I have disabled automatic updating of weather data, but syncronized once manually and was shocked to find that it used a whopping 1.2MB!!! Absoulutely rediculous.
I have not reenabled Windows Update, but since there are no updates available anyway, I fail to see how that might cause as much data as was used.
Which only leaves Windows Live as the culprit. What I fail to see is how it managed to use up so much data when downloading E-mails. Even newsletters, which arrived on the phone too, rarely have more than a hundred or so KB.. and that includes pictures, which the phone does not download automatically.
Well, I'll install the SPB Monitor and let you know what my findings are.
xanthene
PS: There are no push pages set up
I 100% agree with you about the SPB Wireless monitor.
The new version of SPB wireless monitor is great. It will break down which programs are using what data amounts, which connections are being used and will even give a chart showing these things. You can view daily, weekly and monthly. It monitors USB, MMS, GPRS, and even WiFi but all you want is the gprs.
A weather program that uses 1.2 megs is rediculous. I use Weatherpanel (free) it updates once an hour including radar images for 3 cities and it uses about 400k per day!
It is a necessity on my Kaiser and if and when they bring the HTC to North America it will go on that as well.
Do you have facebook sync set up up? When I had it set to auto sync on the 2.1 beta I use on my Touch Pro it was blowing through data and battery.
She may have used less than the bill shows...some carriers round up on up on the data use/cost.
Thanks again for all your input, the matter is basically settled now. I've disabled data connections on the phone, preventing it from accumulating such rediculous charges without reason. Now the data connections just have to be manually turned on before going online - which isn't really an issue considering how little the phone is being used to surf around the net.
SPB Wireless Monitor obviously shows next to no data, on account of the fact that data has been turned off. I used it to read two news pages once and SPB reported 2.5MB. Again, pretty rediculously high amounts for some news. Looks like Opera isnt the most efficient browser. I should benchmark it against Skyfire and Opera 9.7b with Turbo when I have some time.
Regarding the units that get charged: data gets counted in increments of 10 kilobytes, which is more than fair on a prepaid plan.
Facebook sync is turned off.
I guess the matter is settled. Weather uses way more data than it should, and the only other service that I haven't tested yet is Hotmail Push. The cold, hard process of elimination clearly blames Hotmail.
Thanks for all your input.
Hi folks
I'm trying out this program but even though I've set up my tariff with the correct figures on the connection that is my actual GPRS
data connection, it does not register that I am using data, and just shows 0kb all the time.
I'm sure it must be something obvious I've done wrong but I can't figure it.
Can anyone help tell me why this might not be working?
I get up to 95mb free each day and I'm not likely to use anything like this, but I wondered about streaming media like internet radio if
it was on for hours on end so I wanted to set up a warning, but it does not register any data use for some reason.
Cheers
Jim
Anyone? I still can't get it to work
Hi
What version are you using ?
I use version 3.0 and on the Connections and Tariffs menu select everything.
Then select the connection and set up a custom tariff.
r
Andrew
is there any way to monitor the internet usage in WM 6.5 or any app that can do this? I would like to limit myself to an amount of monthly traffic in order to save money on a data plan offer.
SPB Wireless Monitor is easily the best, not free but works a treat.
I'd post a link but being a noob I can't
thanks
was hoping for free but I will check this one out.
I don't know if this helps or not but I downloaded the SPB wireless monitor trial and was very impressed with it. You can set a daily Mb allowance and if you go over the limit you've set it a pop up informs you of that.
The trail period elapsed and I thought I might buy it although it is quite pricey but have found subsequently that even though I can't access the rest of the features now the pop up has continued to work.
Obviously I can't change that limit or anything else for that matter but for the time being that limited functionality is enough for me.
Hey there. This is my first post but rest assured I'm not really a noob (been editing wm reg for at least 5 years...)
I am grandfathered in to an unlimited data plan with at&t (although I did have to go from $20 to $30 a month when I upgraded to the tilt2/rohdium) and I have a minor but seriously annoying problem with using xda-wifi-sharing & bittorrent under some pretty specific circumstances.
I have been using my service to download video for several years as I don't have a tv or internet any other way. I get much of my tv video from tvtorrents.com as you can download entire seasons of just about any tv worth watching.
When I am downloading a season torrent (multiple episodes, many peers etc...) my 3G/HSDPA connection times out or gets "stuck" and requires me to restart the data service on the phone. While this has happened before, rarely, it is happening very frequently now.
Using tvtorrents for these type of downloads affords many high speed seeds and I think that the number of seed/peer connections is somehow overwhelming the 3G/HSDPA data connection, causing it to time out. This never used to happen with this frequency and I'm not sure what to do.
Thanks for your help and thank Jebus for this site (and I don't even believe in Jebus...) as I would never have gotten this far without you all.
tilt2, wm 6.5 stock rom, bloat and crippleware removed
Have you tried a torrent software on the phone itself and downloaded to your Storage Card? My thought it to eliminate the tethering part to see if that has something to do with the lock out.
Thresher said:
Have you tried a torrent software on the phone itself and downloaded to your Storage Card? My thought it to eliminate the tethering part to see if that has something to do with the lock out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hmmm... wasn't aware of a bittorrent client for WM. I've been using uTorrent on my laptop for a few years now without any problems until recently. Right now my girlfriend also connects through the xda-wifi-router and this doesn't happen (at least nowhere near the frequency it happens to me). Physical tethering is a bit of a pain as I find that the orientation of the phone (in relation to laptop) and distance from my laptop significantly affects bandwidth.
I'm thinking about un/reinstalling utorrent, and maybe changing where the tilt2 is in the room... it's been working so well for so long, I'm sure I can get it to work again.
I've also had intermittent crash problems with device.exe on the tilt2, maybe this is related?
Thanks for your help
Ok, I guess that my problem was with at&t's network (damn iPhone users.. ..). Anywho, I have not made any substantial changes, yet all of the sudden, everything works fine.
I am reluctant to call at&t as they want to verify my network settings ( that have been working fine forever but might concern them as I am the network hog, not the iPhone users.. hehe). Every time I call I call from my phone and they have a hard time understanding that it is the only phone I have available.
Strangely, the very act of having one of their techs look at my account seems to fix my problem (most of the time it is that I am traveling).
Regardless, thanks for your help!
I live in Bolivia, my cellular provider is Tigo.
I own and HTC Touch pro2 (AT&T HTC Tilt2) and I had this problem: Involuntary internet connections happen in my phone, my cellular provider has billed me 16 MB for internet navigation in a single day. Their explanation is that probably phone has connected in background using an application. I know the touch flo interface connects to download e-mail headers and weather reports, but I find difficult that this application can use 16MB What can be happening?
As I said all the 16MB were downloaded in a single day and the last 3MB in 5 minutes after downloading internet connection.
Besides the default applications I have just installed pocket e-sword, a bible reader that does not connect to Internet
Is there an application that downloads this quantity of information?
If so, how can I disable it?
Is there any way to see which is the server where my cell connected and what it was doing?
Is there any way to set up my phone with a max download data amount?
The solution that the cell provider gave me momentanially is to disable my internet conection, but that is not exactly what I want.
Thanks on advance.
Igor
Well if you are using Sense, it downloads weather if you dont have it set not to. You might also want to disable the "Get my location at anytime" feature, because it may use AGPS. But I really dont know what else would cause this other than the fact that it is Windows, and it loves its TCP/IP. but the best thing to do would be to use MoDaco - No data to disable the data connections, then when you want to use them just turn them back on.
Thank you
What's MODACO???
How do I disable "Get my location at anytime" ???
Modaco is another website with a forum.
Not sure if this is the latest version, but a quick google of this site turned up the Modaco No Data cab attached to this thread.
btw, you could use something like the SPB GPRS monitor to keep an eye on when internet connections are being made, and how much data is being down/uploaded. If you check task manager when you see a connection being made, perhaps we can trace where the data is being requested. I believe there is a demo version available of this program. I've not yet got a TP2, but can at least confirm that this monitor works fine on a TyTn II. You'll need to tell it which connection to monitor. Battery Status plugin for the today screen should apparently also do the trick.
If you ever get really desperate, you could always use WiFi at home to test without involving spending more, and use your PC to sniff the packets, check for what IP addresses and types of data are being requested. There maybe an app to do this directly on your phone, but I've not looked.