Help Mobile data and background data question.

[beeker]

Hello all! I was just given an Incredible from a friend, and activated just last week. Naturally, I am totally digging it (I've never had a smart phone, or any phone near this high quality).

Unfortunately though, because I missed out on Verizon's July 7th unlimited data cutoff, I'm stuck with their tiered data plan.

This has led me to want to be as on-the-ball when it comes to my data usage as possible. My phone is rooted and running Cyanogen mod 7 btw. I thought I had all the data stuff figured out already, however, I am left with one question, after recently discovering that turning off syncing doesn't turn off all background data.

This sucks, because I thought my handy little power widget I use to turn off sync would eliminate background data, but that is not the case. However, I can just turn off mobile data when I don't want to to be used.

So my question is this--When my mobile data is turned off, does that also eliminate all background data usage, effectively stopping my data usage until I turn data back on? (This is, of course, talking about usage in the absence of a wifi network).

I'd just like to find out for certain that turning off my mobile data completely eliminates background data usage (except for when wifi is available), and therefore does not use my mobile data at all?

Thanks in advance for any answers!

 

[xfuchsiax]

Whenever I turn off mobile data on my phone, it does not do any background updates unless I connect to wifi. Be forewarned though that it also causes me problems receiving MMS messages.

I am still on an unlimited plan, but out of curiosity wanted to see what kind of data usage I had anyway, so I've been using the My Data Manager app (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.mobidia.android.mdm). You can set it up to alert you when you hit certain usage levels.

I honestly thought I was using a TON more data than I actually am, so before you get too worried about your usage I'd suggest monitoring it for a bit to see if you really need to be concerned.

Also many of the battery saving apps will do things like turn off your mobile data for 15 minutes and then turn it on for 1 minute, which I'd think would help some too. My favorite is Green Power (https://market.android.com/details?id=org.gpo.greenpower) but many people also like JuiceDefender (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.latedroid.juicedefender).

Hope that helps!