Abnormally high data usage with tethering - Google Pixel XL Questions & Answers

Hey guys! I'm on a Verizon UDP rooted and tethering enabled. I have always tethered to give my tablet connectivity for Netflix. Previous phones (I.e. Nexus 6, 6p) my normal data usage was 40-50 GB per month. If I didn't watch a lot of videos it would obviously drop.
Anyway, I just wrapped up my first month on the Pixel XL. To my complete surprise, my data usage was 200+ GB. I checked the usage and it's all from tethering/portable hotspot. Yesterday alone, the usage was 8 GB. I was comfortable using 50 GB. I don't wanna be the guy eating up 200+ GB in a month though.
Anyone else ran into anything like this? I don't know what could be different between the Pixel and the Nexus 6p that would cause Netflix to gobble up so much more data. My usage has not changed. I haven't tinkered with any data saving settings on Netflix or on either phone. I'm honestly not sure if it's an issue with the Pixel XL or something that happened in a Netflix update since Christmas. Since the tablet is wifi only, it doesn't have the Netflix cellular data settings in the app setting. I'm baffled...

Is it possible Netflix is just streaming at a higher resolution? Maybe you get better download rates with the pixel. Maybe they added a tower coincidentally at the same time you got the pixel. If you still have the nexus you could stream a movie and check your data usage then stream the same movie with the pixel to compare.

Could be Netflix running at a higher quality, however I have no way to change the quality...So that would be a Netflix update issue. It's definitely not a new tower boosting the network speed in the last month. I'm in a different city everyday, so they surely haven't added that much to the network. Maybe I can try the streaming from both phones this weekend. That would at least confirm if it's something with the Pixel, or some greater unknown problem.

I called Verizon asking about my plan the other day and asked if there planning to take my ud away anytime soon. She told me that they are sending out letters to people using over 100_150 a month. Taking them off ud or cancel them completely. Wonder if there's any truth to that

I read that somewhere as well. Yet another reason I want to figure what's changed and get my usage back down to a reasonable amount. Obviously I could just stop watching videos. I'd much rather find the cause of a 1 hour episode quadrupling in data usage from December (Nexus 6p) and January (Pixel XL).

alsip1023 said:
Anyway, I just wrapped up my first month on the Pixel XL. To my complete surprise, my data usage was 200+ GB. I checked the usage and it's all from tethering/portable hotspot. Yesterday alone, the usage was 8 GB. I was comfortable using 50 GB. I don't wanna be the guy eating up 200+ GB in a month though.
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Is your hotspot password protected or open? Could someone be connecting into your hotspot?
Have you looked in settings to see what cause your data to flare up?

Great thought, but yeah the hotspot is password protected. Setting shows basically all of the data usage is from tethering.
Apparently Netflix lists that HD shows over wifi use up to 3 GB per hour. This actually sounds in line with what I'm getting on my high usage month. I wonder if something changed in the Netflix app on my tablet (an update) where it's now streaming full throttle...Maybe before, it acted as though it was using cellular data and set to run a lower resolution. Now it thinks it's on home wifi and it's streaming full HD to my same old tablet.

alsip1023 said:
Great thought, but yeah the hotspot is password protected. Setting shows basically all of the data usage is from tethering.
Apparently Netflix lists that HD shows over wifi use up to 3 GB per hour. This actually sounds in line with what I'm getting on my high usage month. I wonder if something changed in the Netflix app on my tablet (an update) where it's now streaming full throttle...Maybe before, it acted as though it was using cellular data and set to run a lower resolution. Now it thinks it's on home wifi and it's streaming full HD to my same old tablet.
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That's pretty much what I was saying. Netflix will stream at the highest quality possible so it's likely that something changed, maybe related to your phone, around the same time you got the phone and Netflix noticed that it CAN stream at a higher vibrate so it did.

cntryby429 said:
That's pretty much what I was saying. Netflix will stream at the highest quality possible so it's likely that something changed, maybe related to your phone, around the same time you got the phone and Netflix noticed that it CAN stream at a higher vibrate so it did.
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Can you lower the stream resolution? I've never gone above 20....and since December I've been pushing @40. Only a few for tethering. I'm finding the NBC sports app is racking it up for me

On a wifi only tablet, the Netflix app does not have the option to adjust data usage by changing the video quality. There is an entire Netflix profile option to change the resolution. The downside is that this lowers the resolution for every device you steam to....So using low quality will suck when you go home and fire up Netflix on the 65" 4k TV.
Today I used 9gb of data while watching maybe 3 hours of Netflix video on my tablet. I phoned Netflix this past weekend to express my concern. The lady kept me on the phone for about an hour, and the final word was they hadn't made any changes on their end. I'm really convinced that going from the Nexus 6p to the Pixel XL would not cause the hotspot to use quadruple the data on Netflix.
I'm just completely bummed over this and at a complete loss.

alsip1023 said:
On a wifi only tablet, the Netflix app does not have the option to adjust data usage by changing the video quality. There is an entire Netflix profile option to change the resolution. The downside is that this lowers the resolution for every device you steam to....So using low quality will suck when you go home and fire up Netflix on the 65" 4k TV.
Today I used 9gb of data while watching maybe 3 hours of Netflix video on my tablet. I phoned Netflix this past weekend to express my concern. The lady kept me on the phone for about an hour, and the final word was they hadn't made any changes on their end. I'm really convinced that going from the Nexus 6p to the Pixel XL would not cause the hotspot to use quadruple the data on Netflix.
I'm just completely bummed over this and at a complete loss.
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Netflix should be using lower bandwith when connected through data. On Wifi it will whatever your settings are on the website account settings. I think you are going to have to change it up and down via the site when you are on the tablet or at home. You may also look for hotspot software that can restrict data rate to other devices.
Good Luck.

That's what I'm thinking as well. The unfortunate hassle of changing the account settings. It's just strange how it wasn't like this a month ago. Then something happens and the data use goes through the roof.

ctrl+alt+shift+s while streaming a video on netflix will bring up a menu which will let you change your video settings including video bandwidth and audio bitrate

At least they warned you, I remember when they used to sneak a fair use policy into the contract. Take the quality down a notch and you'll be fine.

Did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same problem with my Pixel XL. I use tethering when traveling for business and notice too that just by doing my business activity I'm using more than double the data than on my Nexus phone. It is Andriod OS that is using about the same data then the tethering option. I called Google support and was told that this is a known issue and that Google is working on a fix

Related

videos dont save after a period of time?

hello, usually when i record videos for a long period of time, about an hour or so, but maybe less i don't really know, it tends to not save my videos. i was thinking it was probably because my storage card doesn't have enough space, and so it doesn't save it. shouldn't it at least tell me its out of space, and stop recording at that time?
I think video application developers did not handle correctly more than x minutes.
Where x may be something related to the number of frames, buffers dimension and so on.
I never esperienced this issue because my videos are short.. I can't test your issue.
You should try another third part software.. I'm looking for a video recorder eith PAUSE function.. BUT I CAN'T FIND IT!
When you hit record the program has no idea how long you plan to record for so how could it warn you? Once it reaches the limit of storage space it simply stops recording. It would be better if it simply stopped and saved what had already been recorded, but who uses a cell phone to record an uninterrupted hour's worth of video? The vast majority of people only record 3-5 minutes of video at a time or less. If you need to shoot video for long periods a dedicated video camera is a much better choice than a cell phone.
is your memory card name brand? i had bought an evo and got a no name 32 gig sd off ebay. next thing i know im losing saved videos. or ill watch them once, go to play it again and it would tell me the file was corrupt. got rid of the 32 gig sd and went back to the 8 gig and it worked like a charm.
incidentally... got rid of the evo and went back to the rhodium. thought i would like android as a main os but wm is just too great. and the rhod is just too amazing lol, just a side note

(Q) Throttle data on some apps

Any of you guys know how to make Netflix use less data? I'm willing to loose picture quality I burned to much data watching Netflix.
Making the iPhone jealous one user at a time.
Bump
Making the iPhone jealous one user at a time.
On a computer go on Netflix and in your account settings you can change the stream quality
Sent from my SGH-I747 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
Ya, looking for even more control with just my phone either throttling via a firewall or a modified Netflix app, when I had spring I could steam Netflix but the image was extremely pixilated and low qualify based on network speed. Looking for a way to reproduce this effect.
I don't want to change image quality with other devices on Netflix, would really like to have WiFi on my phone return to regular pic quality
Making the iPhone jealous one user at a time.

Is this miracast aload of rubbish or is it just me??

so i have a fairly new lg smart TV with built in chromecast..or their alternative..i can connect fine to it from my the phone, image comes up, looks clear, but its so choppy and stuttery that its unusable really..
the same thing happens with my asus memo pad..and one else experienced this or got any tips, cheers
I have had this problem when my internet speed just wasn't fast enough for streaming. We were suppose to have 30 mbps but in reality it was 2-3 mbps, Hargray said we lost all that speed due to it being a wireless connection. We got rid of Hargray, got TimeWarner, paid for 50 mbps, and in reality wirelessly we still got 50 mbps wirelessly and streaming was no longer a problem. This was not with miracast, but netflix and amazon streaming- but the principle is the same.
works very well with cm11.. yay
back to stock 4.6.1 and its ****, whats the difference between stock and cm11??

Similar internet speed-test numbers but noticeably slower browsing compared to laptop

My WIFI internet speed test results:
Laptop (i5 4GB ram running Win7, Chrome ) - 1.08 mbps download
ZF2 (2.3GHz and 4GB ram, Chrome ) -1.3 mbps download
Even though the speedtest numbers are similar, my laptop is markedly faster in loading websites and streaming videos, especially when using multiple tabs. Actually i find streaming html5 videos relatively slow on my phone especially the initial buffer period.
For example, my laptop will start playing a video as soon as i click on it, while a similar video will take at least 40 seconds to start playing on my phone. Worst still, if i seek a different time stamp, it will buffer again wasting my time and annoy the heck out of me. Streaming HD videos, naturally is out of the question.
Is this normal or is there something wrong with my phone? I just upgraded from a galaxy s2 btw and so far, i find the upgrade rather unremarkable tbh.

Netflix HDR/5.1 update... Notice any difference?

My phone arrived in the mail the day the new patch came out and I immediately installed it, so I don't have experience using the app before the update. Outside of the occasional hard lockup and whole phone shutdown, things seem okay when playing HDR/5.1 content (you can search for "HDR" without quotes to see Netflix's current HDR offerings BTW). It's not as vibrant/saturated and blacks aren't as dark as my old Samsung Galaxy S6 Active, though that has an AMOLED display. The Razer Phone seems rather lifelike which I prefer. The sound when paired with the Atmos app is great, though I am not sure how beneficial piping 5.1 audio is i.e. whether it helps with the Atmos surround processing or is down converted to 2.0 prior to Atmos DSP. I also can't speak to the difference since the update, so I'm curious long-time Razer phone users... notice any difference?
Most of us are running carrier branded haven't got this update yet as razer have said mid to late February
TBH, I have the update and don't really see any difference. I tried playing non HDR and HDR content. Maybe it's just me and my old ass eyes.
Jonathan.Parker2005 said:
TBH, I have the update and don't really see any difference. I tried playing non HDR and HDR content. Maybe it's just me and my old ass eyes.
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Just to let people know Razer did state you need the Premium Top Teir Netflix package to watch this HDR content as the low teir and mid tear isnt good enough although the mid teir does say HD quailty and only on certain shows
https://press.razerzone.com/press-r...-premium-smartphone-entertainment-experience/
"Netflix members must be subscribed to the premium plan to watch in HDR, which includes titles like “Bright,” “Stranger Things 2” and the entire Marvel series."
I am on the 4K tier, so I'm fine. I see the shows marked HDR, for instance Marco Polo (my defacto quick link for testing 4k HDR TV's). Normally HDR (on TV's, so this may not be the case on the phone) maxes the back light and hijacks some other settings. I don't see that on this device. Like I said, it's hard to spot the difference if any.
The screen on the razer phone is still dim so don't know how well HDR will show it's vibrant colours. I'm just glad the bug with opening Netflix caused the phone to reboot I believe a Netflix update fixed that
So HDR on Netflix makes no difference?

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