Smartphones & not so smart people

Richard_T_

rjs200 wrote: »

Not mentioned here is the GPS function- is activity on that accounted for by data usage i.e. doers its functionality get switched off if you switch off data roaming and the 3g connection?

( just clicked the worng button - again)

As for GPS and data, it depends on the phone and what software its using in conjunction with the GPS, if its any form of mapping that requires the device to load something from an online source then it will use data, if the maps are stored on the phone then it may not use data.

the best way to check is to get a data monitoring widget/app and try it yourslef.

rjs200

"the best way to check is to get a data monitoring widget/app"

Excellent- will do: not going till December 31st so plenty of time to check what I might want to use.

Cash-Strapped.T32

Indeed - For an example of what Richard says, consider the humble Tom-Tom.
Doesn't connect to the internet in any fashion, it simply has a GPS chip that it uses to gather your position, and draws this onto a 2-d map image that is saved to the sat-nav's memory.


Mobiles with in-built GPS chips can work either in the way I described above, or alternatively, they can download the map "image" piece by piece as you go, such that when you move to the edge of the map, the phone downloads the next section of map.

This *will* add to your data usage, but means you don't need large map-files to be saved onto the phone (for example the UK map I use with the Garmin app on my phone is 2GBs alone).