Mobile data eaten up even on light usage ?

Monanore

I’ve just signed up for a contract with 3GB monthly data which by all accounts should be enough for a light user like me, not doing social media or videos, just checking websites and maps for info etc.

But when I started measuring usage it’s become apparent that such activity uses far more than I anticipated.  For instance, simply looking at a building society site for 2 mins was 10MB.  Multiply that up for daily activity of, say, 20 mins, gives 30 days x 10 x 10 = 3000, so limit easily reached.

This contradicts what articles say, that for light use, 1-2 GB is ample.

Digging into it, the major factor seems to be the huge number of images in websites, most of which are unnecessary, except of course for maps. But they can’t be switched off – take Opera Mini for example, supposed to be the best for data saving.  It does save a lot using compression and other techniques and you can also stop the news display so that helps. But it has removed the option to not show images, offering only to show them in lower quality.

So, am I miscalculating, was I misled, or am I missing something ?

( I posted this on techie stuff too, as the categories overlap )

Exodi

Hard to advise on this level of detail, but I'd add that background processes also consume a lot of data (and there is a setting to restrict this called 'Data Saver' on Android).

You can monitor usage by apps in settings also, so it would be worth confirming that 100% of usage is from your internet browser.

Thirdly, I believe you can disable images in Chrome settings (see below on desktop, I'm sure it's the same on mobile):



I would add, that 3GB is realistic for a lot of people with the big caveat being that you use WiFi when at home. If you're using mobile data 24/7 it's probably unrealistic to think you could use the smallest data package.

In my experience, there is very little difference in price for packages with data sub 10gb.

Olinda99

yes 3GB is no use - far too little, especially if you are 'checking maps'

set your apps to.update over wifi only

Murmansk

It's always hard to know what data you have used or will use but if you look at data prices it gets far cheaper the more you pay for - for example on 1pMobile that I use 10gb is £8.00 and 25gb is £10 so for the extra £2 you get 2.5 times as much data and it gets even cheaper pro-rata if you buy more.

I can only assume it's similar with other providers so I'd be inclined to not worry too much as it's actually very good value.

EnPointe

Exodi said:

<snip>

I would add, that 3GB is realistic for a lot of people with the big caveat being that you use WiFi when at home. If you're using mobile data 24/7 it's probably unrealistic to think you could use the smallest data package.

 I agree with this assertion. 
  

PHK

Monanore said:

I’ve just signed up for a contract with 3GB monthly data which by all accounts should be enough for a light user like me, not doing social media or videos, just checking websites and maps for info etc.

But when I started measuring usage it’s become apparent that such activity uses far more than I anticipated.  For instance, simply looking at a building society site for 2 mins was 10MB.  Multiply that up for daily activity of, say, 20 mins, gives 30 days x 10 x 10 = 3000, so limit easily reached.

This contradicts what articles say, that for light use, 1-2 GB is ample.

Digging into it, the major factor seems to be the huge number of images in websites, most of which are unnecessary, except of course for maps. But they can’t be switched off – take Opera Mini for example, supposed to be the best for data saving.  It does save a lot using compression and other techniques and you can also stop the news display so that helps. But it has removed the option to not show images, offering only to show them in lower quality.

So, am I miscalculating, was I misled, or am I missing something ?

( I posted this on techie stuff too, as the categories overlap )

Probably looking at older articles. The best place to check is the data counter in your phone. This will show you what you actually use. 

Webpages are dynamically generated now and images taken up more space because displays are bigger in terms of pixels and colours. They take up more memory than they used a tab. A tab in chrome could be tens of megabytes. 

Check what you use and buy a plan accordingly.

HampshireH

I've had a 2GB sik only plan for last year or so maybe 2 since I went sim only.

In that time I only had to add more data once and then I decided to up my plan. That was two months ago 

I spend about 3 hours a day browsing rubbish in the evenings, include social media etc but all home use is on the wifi. Used car satnav not maps etc

It can be done. But more data is almost as affordable then two or three GB these days.