Hi,

The phone doesnt have to be online all the time no, you can set intervals as to when the weather widget should update. So you can tell it to only go online and update once a day, or every 2 hours, etc.

Take a look in the thread in my signature for some more tips, I'd definately recommend you get the 3G Watchdog application as it can record how much data you've used.

 

The more Apps you have running naturally the more data you will use. Most of the Apps need an Internet connection although in their Settings you can often change the Notification rate. The less frequent these Apps update, the less data you will use. However the default Apps, even when set to frequently update every few minutes, do not use enough data to worry Orange users.

Like I said, if you download the 3G Watchdog from the Market, it will monitor your data usage and let you know when you're close to the limit.

But as I have said before Orange will not penalise you if you do go over the limit point blank. The Fair Usage policy is there for offenders of the usage limit, so if you're abusing it by using the device as a modem or downloading multiples of the limit then you will get noticed.

 

I'm not so sure, talking to CS myself, they told me the 500gb is a maximum, and I would have been charged

 

related to the weather widget...

my city isn't in the list of cities that shows up by default....

any workarounds to this?

 

@mbk.2k3: Same here, cant find my town in the list, BUT: it finds my town if it's my current location. So i can find out what the weather is like at home if i'm at home (i guess to save me the effort of looking out of the window) but i cant find out what the weather is like at home if i'm away somewhere. Great.

@SKYEJENX: Apps such as weather, twitter, email etc which periodically access the internet generate *tiny* amounts of traffic. Seriously, you could have them updating every 5 minutes and you'd still barely dent your 500mb limit.

What does use up bandwidth is stuff like streaming internet radio or watching youtube etc. Installing apps can use up a bit too - but all of this stuff is under your direct control.

So I'll second what meus and lekky said: download 3G watchdog - if nothing else it will make you realise just how little bandwidth these apps use.

 

mbk.2k3
I don't use the stock weather widget, instead I downloaded The Weather Channel App from The Marketplace, it's free and is very useful if your city or area isn't listed on the stock app. It barely uses any of your bandwidth/allowance.

As others have already said use 3G Watchdog highly recommend.

Al