Hello!
I've found a lot of discussions about data counters, but generaly they all come to some users having good expirience with a particular app and others finding it unreliable.
As my data traffic costs get insanely high after i break the monthly limit, I'm pretty paranoid about my usage, so I myself installed fiew data counting apps and compared results. No two ever showed same figures that could be considered identical for practical purposes.
As I see that's an issue for manny users, I'd like to opet this discussion again here, but from a bit different aproach.
I'd like to know what methods apps use to collect data traffic statistics, what causes them to sometimes do it inaccurately, and is there maybe some superior method that can realy be relied upon?
I use 3G Watchdog and this is very reliable.
It counds UP and DOWN data usage so this could mean data usage appears higher than what your operator charges.
I check my Tesco account and my data usage there is very similar to that of 3G watchdog.
Related
Anyone else using LeadBoltApps.com to monetize their android or iOS apps? I recently switched over from AdMob, and my eCPM's went from around .20 cents to nearly $3.00.
What are other publishers generating? I have a few game apps.
What is the question? This seems more like an advert than an actual question.
You will almost always see increased eCPM when you shift ad networks, simply because you expose your users to an entirely new set of ads (in addition, the network might also redirect some of the more lucrative ads in your direction initially). The only way to properly evaluate an ad network is over a longer period of time - so far, I've not seen much to prefer one over any other.
Yeah, I do see initial boosts in CPM, and it fluctuates daily; what app(s) do you publish? I wasn't promoting LeadBoltApps.com vs any other mobile ad networks; but I did test them out.
few ad networks where you can monetize your apps you can try adiquity,smaato….
Hi all,
I'm Guy from Onavo, and I wanted to share with you all that after much anticipation Onavo (which was available only for the iPhone till now) has come to Android!
Today we launched Onavo Lite, an app that solves the "Android data leak", as we call it. In the world of capped data plans (not to mention outrageous roaming charges), the problem with the Android ecosystem is apps run constantly in the background, which means they can be using data whether you use the app or not. Users have no control and no way to limit the data that is used. Until now.
Launched today, Onavo Lite puts users in control of their data usage. The app flags 'data hog' apps and allows users to make apps 'WiFi only', effectively stopping the data leakage.
The app helps control data usage and costs through features such as:
- Alerts and warnings: when an app is hogging data in the background, when approaching your cap, or when traveling
- Data hog blocking: can opt to block certain apps over 3G, or 3G data in general once you exceed your data cap to avoid any additional costs
- Tracking: Real-time data plan tracking and early alerts when usage reaches certain limits.
- Advice: Tips on best value data plans based on your actual usage
- Simple set up: Removes all the complexity from mobile data plans
If any of you have any questions, feel free to shoot them my way here in the forum. We would love your feedback on our app.
To download just search for "Onavo" on the Market.
I'm happy to see this app finally reach android, but the version for android doesn't do the main thing it does on the iPhone: compress data.
There are already apps that monitor data usage.. so why is this different?
other apps also have notification and that stuff.
So when will the data compressing feature be available?
Hi Ilya,
Compression for Android is definitely on its way, we are working to bring that to you as well. However we realized that to help users truly tame data plans, we needed to deliver a more holistic solution. Since on Android background data usage is a REAL problem (as opposed to iPhone) so we simply couldn't wait to release this to the public and deliver this great value. (Google for "android iphone data usage" to see a post on our blog, from our chief Android guru, on the conceptual differences between Android's and iPhone's data consumption models).
There are some great meters out there, but nothing provides:
a) Real-time alerts when apps are eating up your data in the background
b) Crowdsourced intelligence that lets you learn from our global community and get advance warnings on apps that may be problematic to your data plan.
c) The ability to block apps from using your mobile data in the background.
Add to that compression, when we release that, and you've got a one-stop-shop for all your data usage needs.
I have a few feature requests:
- specify another currency (as I am in a foreign country, it is definitely the wrong one).
- specify the begin of the monthly plan (I can specify this value for the domestic, but not for the roaming plan)
- specify previously used data - I already used some data prior to the installation
After all, looks promising...
Kind regards,
ww
All good points. Quick questions:
a) the app should suggest your own local currency (that of the SIM). This usually makes sense as if you're on your home operator's SIM you pay in your home currency, if you buy a prepaid SIM locally it would be in that country's price. What's the scenario in your case?
b) Can you describe the kind of roaming plan you're using?
Thanks!
Quick answers:
- austrian SIM (EUR), I am in Switzerland at the moment (roaming). Result: currency shown in CHF.
- my plans both begin on 26th of the month. Domestic plan: 1 GB; roaming plan: 50 MB. In the app I can specify the begin of the domestic plan. But: roaming plan begins today from my point of view.
Kind regards,
ww
Gotcha! Thanks for clarifying - definitely stuff we'd like to take care of.
Keep us posted
@webwude - we just uploaded a new version with some bugfixes, among them we have fixed your point #1 about the currency.
Thank your for the information.
I experiencing a strange issue (maybe related to your app):
since this morning, I get timeouts using the standard internet app, k-9 mail, gmail and so on - only a few apps (mail with exchange, provider app) are still working, all other (which I have used in the meantime) seems to be blocked, even after uninstalling your app. Is there any way to reset things as they were before? If I start apps which I haven't used since yesterday, they can connect... otherwise I can see that there is traffic, but browser or market just get timeouts...
It seems, that there is some sort of lock...
I will investigate this furthermore this evening...
Kin regards,
ww
Hi, i have one question. How do i turn the "Roaming, enjoy your trip" notification off? I'm always roaming (it's complicated) so i'm getting a bit annoyed when that notification sticks itself up there and i can't remove it.
Thanks in advance
There appears to be a huge discrepancy between the usage level reported by 3G Watchdog and Onavo - 304MB and 855MB respectively. What's the cause of the discrepancy, and which app would be more reliable?
@webwude - re some apps not connecting, that shouldn't be Onavo (especially not after you removed it). Did you find out what happened?
@BazookaAce - good point! BTW what kind of SIM are you using?
@Kawdess - we're looking into such discrepancies, will let you know what we find.
Tele 2 Sweden, but I live in Norway and my operator is Tele 2 Norway but Tele 2 Norway is roaming on NetComs towers. Tele 2 Norway doesn't have its own yet.
So since the SIM is swedish it "calls home" (to sweden) before bouncing back to norway and completes the call.
So Tele 2 Norway customers roam 24/7. And no, we do not pay more than normal
Because I am a "noob" and not allowed to reply to any topic except this "General" Forum, here is my question. WP7 public API cannot query the phone hardware to determine how much data traffic has occurred on a specific network adapter (ie: 3G network) so we cannot have a simple app such as 3G Watchdog (Android app) to monitor how much data we have used? It is stated that carriers would have access to this sort of data, but what I have seen so far is Apps specific to carriers that log into the account and "extract" this information. This is unsuitable:
1) In every case I have seen it uses that carriers mobile network to poll their site, so actually increasing the usage of their mobile internet
2) The carrier site is always significantly behind the actual usage so you would probably go over the limit if you are trying to run close to the limit
There is reference that WP8 will be able to do this, is there any real knowledge of this or is it just a wish and a pray that MS get their act together and allow this low level system interrogation? WP7 has many updates, so is this something MS could package into an update and fix now? I take it there is no other way to get this data (SNMP type network traps and polling springs to mind)?
My son has WP7 (from Android) and this is pretty disappointing that something as simple as monitoring his interenet usage is so cumbersome. Reading other forums and expecting corporates to load this software, specific to a carrier, configure it with corporate account information and release it to employees is also pretty mind boggling.
I know this may seem like a very noob quetion but i wanted to get it cleared once and for all..
does cloud back end mean the following???
I have an app that collects data, processes it, and gives the output and the ui displays it.. all this done on the phone..
does cloud backend mean, my functions that process the data are in the cloud so i'm saving processing activity by letting it be done in that cloud..
all i have to do is send input and collect output. from my phone.???
Is this wat these services do???
Also if yes, what is the difference between the following..
Google app engine and compute engine??
cloud storage and cloud SQL??
which should i use to run functions and store temp data ( lasts not more than a week)..
and the data is processed once every minute but the size of data is not more than a few KB...
am basically doing a bit of number crunching.. collect a few numbers , run a function, return a number..
What would be ideal for me???
Cloud back end
Hi
Cloud computing is just a buzz-word, meaning that client application will use some dedicated network resource for some purpose. In some scenarios makes sense to use the back-end for data storage only. In others - for computations only. Others can combine between storage, analysis, computations, etc. Computations also can be performed partly on the client side, partly on the back-end side.
For deciding what is the boundary, splitting between the client and the back-end, usually the following considerations are taken:
Should the data be shared between client apps (may be of the same user or even across users)? If it should - most likely at least partial data storage needed to be cloud based
Is all the data, required for computation available at the client side? If not - may be makes sense to store missing data at the back-end and to cache it on the client side. If the data is dynamic and consistency across the clients is required - may be makes sense to perform at least part of the computation, requiring the back-end provided data to perform at the back-end, and then to continue computing on the client.
How often do you need to run the computation? If too often (e.g. more than once per second) back-end side computation will involve the network latency and data traffic overhead. So may be makes sense to perform the computation at the client side.
On the other hand - does the computation require computing power? Most of the client devices have rather weak CPU. Running heavy computations will take long time and will drain the battery. In this case at least the heavy parts of the computation makes sense to perform on the back-end
Etc, etc.
Regarding back-end storage as files or SQL: first of all, besides SQL databases there are a lot of other (NOSQL) kinds of DB. Such as: document DB, graph DB, etc. You need to decided which kind of data storage fits your needs best, based on the following considerations:
Which kind of data will be stored? black-box binary or composed from primitives (String/boolean/int/float/etc.)?
What are the relations between entries? For example for modeling social network, where entries are "Persons" and relations are from Person to many Persons - in this case graph usually DB fits best.
How data do you expect to retrieve the data? Is it just entry by some ID or you want to run queries by the fields of the entries?
In general, much deeper understanding of your problem is needed in order to give you more specific suggestions.
Good luck
Thanks
nvyaniv said:
I know this may seem like a very noob quetion but i wanted to get it cleared once and for all..
does cloud back end mean the following???
I have an app that collects data, processes it, and gives the output and the ui displays it.. all this done on the phone..
does cloud backend mean, my functions that process the data are in the cloud so i'm saving processing activity by letting it be done in that cloud..
all i have to do is send input and collect output. from my phone.???
Is this wat these services do???
Also if yes, what is the difference between the following..
Google app engine and compute engine??
cloud storage and cloud SQL??
which should i use to run functions and store temp data ( lasts not more than a week)..
and the data is processed once every minute but the size of data is not more than a few KB...
am basically doing a bit of number crunching.. collect a few numbers , run a function, return a number..
What would be ideal for me???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
shwonder said:
Hi
Cloud computing is just a buzz-word, meaning that client application will use some dedicated network resource for some purpose. In some scenarios makes sense to use the back-end for data storage only. In others - for computations only. Others can combine between storage, analysis, computations, etc. Computations also can be performed partly on the client side, partly on the back-end side.
For deciding what is the boundary, splitting between the client and the back-end, usually the following considerations are taken:
Should the data be shared between client apps (may be of the same user or even across users)? If it should - most likely at least partial data storage needed to be cloud based
Is all the data, required for computation available at the client side? If not - may be makes sense to store missing data at the back-end and to cache it on the client side. If the data is dynamic and consistency across the clients is required - may be makes sense to perform at least part of the computation, requiring the back-end provided data to perform at the back-end, and then to continue computing on the client.
How often do you need to run the computation? If too often (e.g. more than once per second) back-end side computation will involve the network latency and data traffic overhead. So may be makes sense to perform the computation at the client side.
On the other hand - does the computation require computing power? Most of the client devices have rather weak CPU. Running heavy computations will take long time and will drain the battery. In this case at least the heavy parts of the computation makes sense to perform on the back-end
Etc, etc.
Regarding back-end storage as files or SQL: first of all, besides SQL databases there are a lot of other (NOSQL) kinds of DB. Such as: document DB, graph DB, etc. You need to decided which kind of data storage fits your needs best, based on the following considerations:
Which kind of data will be stored? black-box binary or composed from primitives (String/boolean/int/float/etc.)?
What are the relations between entries? For example for modeling social network, where entries are "Persons" and relations are from Person to many Persons - in this case graph usually DB fits best.
How data do you expect to retrieve the data? Is it just entry by some ID or you want to run queries by the fields of the entries?
In general, much deeper understanding of your problem is needed in order to give you more specific suggestions.
Good luck
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
we get data which is hardly a few KB but it involves a lot of processing.. The issue is that we used to use google drive app script to do this where within a minute we process 30 or odd request(we are still testing on a small scale.. this is more of a info gathering or research phase for us right now) .. these requests have to be processed within the minute.. cause the very next minute we recieve our next data package... Apps script said we used too much CPU for the time... So we are looking into app engine...
Any advice??
Do you mean 30 requests per minute from each client? How many clients to you plan to have at production phase? I think it's too frequent for the option of performing all the calculation at the cloud. Can you split the calculation between the client and the cloud in such way that you can reduce the frequency of cloud based calculations? For example, may be not all the inputs of the calculation are indeed changing with this frequency. May be part of them are more static and you can calculate the part which depends on more static data at the cloud, and then to complete the calculation on the client side, using additional (more dynamic) inputs.
Also take into account that you can hardly assume that online connection is always available in mobile device. Sometimes your customers will be out of the coverage, sometimes the network will be switching from mobile data to WiFi and vice versa. It's a question of required reliability. From "...these requests have to be processed within a minute..." I understand that you need high reliability (otherwise it's not a problem to skip some requests if you are not able to process all of them).
nvyaniv said:
we get data which is hardly a few KB but it involves a lot of processing.. The issue is that we used to use google drive app script to do this where within a minute we process 30 or odd request(we are still testing on a small scale.. this is more of a info gathering or research phase for us right now) .. these requests have to be processed within the minute.. cause the very next minute we recieve our next data package... Apps script said we used too much CPU for the time... So we are looking into app engine...
Any advice??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As many are asking for a similar trick , I would like to share a tool that is of use for the following :
Small mobile data plans that get expired quickly (500MB , 1GB, ..)
Tethering data plans that are limited to a fixed amount and get exhausted rapidly
One of few solutions for this , is to use a bandwidth limiter that :
Sets the connection speed to fit to your needs (preventing many app from stealing bandwidth)
Sets tethering upload/download speed and therefore increase the tethering data plan life time
Drastically accelerates all the connections
Recently added to the store and tested in many devices the app is available here :
Bandwidth ruler free on goolge Store
For more details, Its dedicated XDA thread :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-bandwidth-manager-android-t2972889