• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help HTC Desire constant data use

Consumer

Lurker
May 19, 2010
2
0
Hi people, new HTC Desire user here. I've downloaded 2 different apps, 3g watchdog & netcounter which both show the amount of 3g data usage for the phone. Just yesterday, I managed to apparently use nearly 20mb of 3g data, although I was barely on the web. I must've checked my facebook a couple of times, read a few emails, and that was it. I've also installed a task manager app which closes all running apps, which I always use before locking the screen and putting the phone in my pocket. So as far as I know, there shouldn't be any apps running or using any data at all. It may be that push email may be using a bit, but surely not 20mb in one day?? It's also only one email account and the full html version of the email is never shown. I'm with Vodafone, and their supposedly "Unlimited" internet is capped at 500mb, which means at the rate that my phone is apparently going now, I would have maxed that out in a month hardly using the internet at all! I doubt that the data counter apps are wrong as they are both showing the same usage. They've both had really good reviews by other users as well. However, I find it extremely hard to believe that I used 20mb in one day when I only looked at possibly 3 web pages. The counters actually show that I used over 1mb after 30 mins, even when I wasn't running any apps.

Please let me know your views on this, whether there's something that I need to tweak on the phone, whether you think that both the 3g data apps are wrong, whether there are apps using data that aren't identified by the task manager, anything really! It'll be such a shame if I'm restricted with using the phone to its full potential by its excessive need for data usage. Thanks!
 
I use the following standard HTC Desire widets. This lets me control when it uses the data connection.
1. Power Control
2. Mobile Network (found in the Settings widget pull down)
3. Sync All

Power Control lets me turn on/off wifi and auto sync

Mobile Natwork turns on/off the mobile data connection which enables/stops you
3G/GPRS data connection (this can also be done from the power switch menu - hold it down to see this menu)

Sync All lets me manually kick the sync off (alternatively just toggle the auto sync button on the Power control widget)
 
Upvote 0
I had the same problem and discovered it was the e-mail downloading huge amounts of data (Used the Spare Parts App someone else suggested) even tho I don’t get that many emails (1 or 2 a day!). In the end I turned the standard email app off (So it never auto synced) and downloaded another email app to use instead (I got K9 Mail). Since then it has been much better with the data usage.

At one point 3g Watchdog said I was on for 2000mb by the end of the month.. Now with my 500meg limit, and oranges 99p/MB after that I would have had a nice
 
Upvote 0
The bigger the bar the bigger the network use. ;) So which of yours is bigger? Do you have facebook contacts continually syncing?


Im sure all my applications (including facebook,email,weather) are set to 'manually update' and 'use wireless networks' is turned off.

During the past 15mins my phone has sent (and received) approx 350bytes of data each way. In the network usage screen, 'Dialer' is 50% blue 50% red, '0' is 25% blue 75% grey, 'Android System' is 1% blue, 5% red and 94% grey, 'Google' is 100% grey. I accessed the network usage screen via the dialer.

What on earth is '0'?!

Edit: I've just realised that 'Dialer', 'Android System' and '0' appear under network usage even if 3G and Wi-Fi are off. I suspect that 'Network' refers to the telephony network too not just data.
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones