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Pretty self explanatory this one - is there any way of knowing whether your mobile internet connection (3G) or WiFi is being used in, for example, a browser session? Just don't want to make the mistake of looking at YouTube on the phone, meaning to use the home WiFi, and end up using my 3G by accident, and paying through the nose for extra feed.
ryanbryan said:
Pretty self explanatory this one - is there any way of knowing whether your mobile internet connection (3G) or WiFi is being used in, for example, a browser session? Just don't want to make the mistake of looking at YouTube on the phone, meaning to use the home WiFi, and end up using my 3G by accident, and paying through the nose for extra feed.
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The icons on your task bar should indicate if you have a active data connection.
Or, you can use Spb Wireless Monitor (which you need to purchase). It produces reports telling you which software uses which connections and the amount of data transferred.
In a discussion I had with HTC Tech Support, they told me that wifi, when enabled, over-rides the cellular data. I'm not sure if this just applies to the settings or always. Hopefully, someone can provide a definitive answer.
Yes that is correct, if WIFI is enabled you WILL NOT have a cellular data connection.
Umm. There is a wifi icon in the taskbar o.o and a signal icon also.....whichever is there means it's active and if wifi is there, your data will not be active, only wifi.
What all you are saying is true but some applications still use the data network even if wifi is turned on and connected it seems. I have the same issue(i don't have a data plan with my fuze since my college has wifi everywhere). But things like weather and other native apps on the phone will just turn on the 3g network and stat using data instead of wifi.
if a device is transfering data over gprs/3g whatever
it show arrows moving in the signal str icon
otherwise it use wifi
Applications can choose to use a certain connection if they are programmed to do so, windows only gives each one a type of 'ranking', the fastest connection having the highest ranking and being the one an application is to use by default, but the application can override this and choose whatever connection it likes. This ranking is called the "Interface Metric" if you'd like to learn more about it.
There's an HTC program called 'bytecounter' that monitors the SMDx: ports in the system, which are the ports the system uses for data.. in bytecounter you will see the values increase if an application is using data over cellular network. let me know if you'd like me to upload it.
Umm. There is a wifi icon in the taskbar o.o and a signal icon also.....whichever is there means it's active and if wifi is there, your data will not be active, only wifi.
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Well that wasn't particularly helpful. I too have made the same assumption, but the question asked if there was any way to make sure.
windows only gives each one a type of 'ranking', the fastest connection having the highest ranking and being the one an application is to use by default, but the application can override this and choose whatever connection it likes
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Well that was the kind of answer I was looking for, and is particularly pertinent in my case, as my connection through my mobile provider is about as fast (or maybe even faster) than my fixed line connection at home. A rather bizarre situation, but such is the advancement of Australian broadband infrastructure.
The last couple of times I have used it, I have taken to turning off the phone connection so that only WiFi is running, and then using the internet. It would be good if you can upload the byetcounter program, seems like a free (?) version of the software programatix mentioned.
Here ya go!
Maybe this is just me, but when I try to unzip that file, nothing comes up....?
lol, i always forget to remove the hidden attribute.. let me go ahead and fix that..
Edit: fixed
Newer Windows Live (including the one that come with Touch Pro) will always dial-up the 3G/GPRS connection when checking for email in Messaging. But if you are checking in Windows Live, most of the time it doesn't dial-up but sometimes, it does.
So far that is the only program that I know of behaves like this. I contacted Microsoft regarding this and they keep asking me to contact my celular provider for help. In other word, they are not helping (or do not understand the problem).
Anyway I solved the problem by changing the Connections setting to "My Work Network" for Internet. The catch is, if I really want to use 3G/GPRS, I'll have to change the setting to my celular 3G/GPRS connection.
Or you could use the nodata application from modaco and disable whenever you like the cellular 3g connection just to be sure you are using wifi.When you are away from wifi networks you can in a matter of 2 clicks reenable the cellular 3g connection...
I will be travelling to a foreign country next month. I have arranged to get a SIM while in country so I can continue to use my private Google maps and GPS on my phone while I am there. There are, of course, bandwidth restrictions and costs, so I am looking to keep the traffic utilized by my phone to an absolute minimum when utilizing the data signal via the SIM. I ran a traffic monitor on my data connection over the last 24 hours and with limited use of the phone, it still managed to cumulatively send/receive almost 180MB of data.
Can anyone suggest any apps or have any suggestions (short of uninstalling all of my other passive data-using apps) to control what apps are permitted to use the data connection? Any assistance is appreciated, thanks!
*I'm rockin' a Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II (SCH-I605) in case that affects anyone's response.
Hello,
I've GT-P3100, and mainly I use it as a Wifi - hotspot. It has a 3G SIM and I used it to watch movies and for internet surfing, and I've never used it to make calls. However, I start to get annoyed by the idea of switching from H+ to 3G automatically, which leaves the internet almost dead for 5min or so and for no reason. I've tried to adjust the settings for my ROM to use only WCDMA (3G only), but I can't go further to make it use only and only H+ data connection.
My question, is it possible to enforce my tablet to use only H+ at all times?
Life battery is no problem for me, nor the data bandwidth because I'm using a plan with no restrictions. Anything regarding my ROM is in my signature.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Hi there.
I have been recently working outside my home country and I disable my mobile data as soon as I reach the airport.
My Nexus 5, now with 4.4.3 reports 0 bytes of data when I am in roaming and I never got a notification or any sort of activity that may point to a data access being made, yet my service provider sent a big bill with many 10KB accesses during the time I was in roaming.
The same problem might exist while at my home country, but since I have a few hundreds of MB to use each month, I can't really tell.
Anyone else is facing the same problem?
I will temporarily ask my service provider to block my data access while in roaming, but I would like to understand if that is some sort of Android bug or a service provider charging what it shouldn't.
I've looked a bit more into this issue and I suspect that it was the Google Location Services that try to obtain the positioning from the cellular mobile network.
I've installed the Network Monitor Mini and it showed me a few times that process has a residual network usage.
Since I'm on Wifi most of the time, I assumed that network usage was on the WiFi but now I understand that being connected to the WiFi doesn't mean that the phone cannot use cellular data.
Can anyone that uses little Mobile Data (disabled in the Settings most of the time) confirm that the eventually you get some cellular data charged if you have the Location Settings set to use the mobile networks?
Sorry for the monologue, but this might be useful for someone that may face this problem in the feature.
After being more attentive to the network usage pointed by Network Monitor Mini, I think I found the culprit.
I've spent the last weeks with mobile data completely off, using only WiFi, yet on a couple of occasions I noticed Network Monitor Mini reporting minimal network usage being made when no know network WiFi was around.
As the screenshot shows, the WiFi is not connected to any known access point, yet some data was being uploaded by one of those processes.
I think the phone is trying to ping the cellular antenna for a location, thus accounting for mobile data access.
I've disabled the location and I will keep monitoring the data usage to see if that is the real culprit. Also noticed that Network Monitor Mini has a traffic breakdown mode per interface. I'll use that to distinguish wifi and cellular data.
why not just disable data complete, a data signal wont even appear because it wont be connected to data? go to main settings, more, mobile networks, data enabled.. now uncheck it and your data connection will disappear, but your phone connection will stay.
edit.. and if you have root, you can install the disable service app, then you can disable the 5 differing types of location services that your phone uses.
Hi simms22.
Like I said on the first post, that was the first thing I did in the airport. I'm not saying simply disabling roaming data, I disabled data completely.
The point I'm trying to show is that even with mobile data disabled, in roaming I still got several tiny chunks of data registered by my operator and I occasionally noticed Network Monitor Mini showing 0.1KB upload, as shown in the screenshot.
Regards.
VuDuCuRSe said:
Hi simms22.
Like I said on the first post, that was the first thing I did in the airport. I'm not saying simply disabling roaming data, I disabled data completely.
The point I'm trying to show is that even with mobile data disabled, in roaming I still got several tiny chunks of data registered by my operator and I occasionally noticed Network Monitor Mini showing 0.1KB upload, as shown in the screenshot.
Regards.
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well, a little bit of data can be transferred through the phone signal(sms). do you have disabled in wifi settings, bottom right three dots, advanced, scanning always available? that uses the wifi to scan for location even when wifi is off, maybe they do that with the mobile signal as well. anyways, about a month ago, google location services kept waking my device non stop, so i completely disabled them in the google play services using the disable service app(i have root). now google never checks for my location unless i let it.
Hey.
I disabled the Location services in Settings, restricted the background data and so far it has been three days with no data accesses registered by my provider.
I don't think the background data is responsible for the traffic so I will wait a couple more days and then re-enable it.
I think the Location services are useful and I do like those small things it offers like weather prediction for where you are, where you parked the car, time to go home/work and movie times near you. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to respect the Mobile data status.
Just raised an issue in the AOSP tracker
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=72332&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
If you share the concern on this problem, please star it to give visibility.
VuDuCuRSe said:
Just raised an issue in the AOSP tracker
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=72332&colspec=ID Type Status Owner Summary Stars
If you share the concern on this problem, please star it to give visibility.
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It also happens with me but I have a Galaxy S4. It's a huge defect to alow location to consume mobile data even with the data roaming and mobile data disabled.
Does anybody know a wifi traffic monitor app that will show you how much data you have used at any certain time, per period (day/month/etc) but also grouped by network ssid? Like for example I'm running a personal hotspot (portable 3g router - say ssid TEST) that has a certain ammount of data available per month, and I want to see on my phone for example, how much data I have used on that particular network (ssid TEST).
I found some apps that show monthly and daily wifi usage, but it's combined for all wifi networks you connect to. I am looking for an app that shows usage per wifi network.
Anybody have any tips?
Thanks.
Built in functionality
The built-in data usage monitor in 5.0 and up is sufficient for me, it perfectly shows the data used per app (so also when using a hotspot)
What Android are you running?