On verge of selling S3 - too much data being used. Help

[+DKAngel Subscriber²]

Unrelated to the OP's question, but which ROM has this app?

I ask because I'm on the Paranoid Android JB 4.1.2 ROM and I don't have this?

the stock 4.0.4 rom has it

i just looked at my facebook data and within 15days 119 meg, but then again thats a mix of wifi and mobile and i dont touch it much, id say ur wifes usage just needs to change or u need a better plan as also.

177meg used in 19days facebook being the highest also the facebook app runs different and is designed different to its ios counterparts so it may chew mroe data

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

She's just used 3MB while the phone was sat on the sofa, mobile data turned off, WiFi turned on.

If your mobile data is climbing while it's turned off, something's amiss with either her phone or the usage monitoring. Some networks in the UK have usage meters that you can check online at their end. I'd see if yours does and compare their data with yours. If the values are roughly equal, it's the phone (or the network) screwing up. If it's wildly different, it's likely the way the phone monitors usage. Either way it could suggest a problem with the phone.

For what it's worth, my mobile data usage for Facebook is about 5MB since the start of the month.

When you look at the apps running in the background once everything has been shut down, there's LOADS. Settings alone was listed as 45MB. Facebook was 18MB. Swiftkey3 was 20+MB. Will this make a difference - all this background work, or is that nothing to do with mobile data & more to do with processor hogging or whatever?

Thats process RAM usage. Unrelated.

If she likes the phone, it might be worth taking it back and replacing it with the same model. If it starts happening again, it could be a network issue. As a first step though, it might just be worth turning it off and on again, I don't know if it'd help, but it's worth a shot.

[Shadrack]

You seriously bought a highend phone and then paired it up with the budget data plan? Rather illogical move to be honest.

Anyway, how much of facebook's auto-sync stuff do you have turned on? If it's all turned on it'll likely use quite a bit of data.

Whaaa? Budget data plan? The 200 and 300MB is a budget data plan. I would be swimming in 500MB/month! Some people who have wifi at work and at home don't really use much data day in and day out...

[Growled Member]

I have never kept my mobile on at all times. I turn mine on and off via a widget on my home screen. Plus, I keep auto-sync turned off. I can manually do what I need to do.

[abysal]

My FB data usage isn't much at all on my S3. I have everything turned off and I don't upload many pics. I think last month the pics that I did upload were done while I was on WiFi. Also I think having a 300 MB plan is fine, but unfortunately you have to watch your data usage on any modern droid or apple phone while only having a 300 MB limit.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

I know that this isn't a real solution, per se, but when my data plan was on 500MB I found myself constantly getting reminders that I was about to hit my limit at around the 20th of each month, and that was including me switching to Wifi whenever possible. Then I upgraded my limit to the unlimited package (10GB) for pretty much nothing, and I don't even think about my usage now. I even tether my 3G connection to my laptop and browse semi-normally, and I've not hit my limit or even received a warning.

As I said, this isn't a real solution, but it isn't all that expensive to increase your data limit these days.

I notice you said that she always switches to Wifi when it's available. Does she also turn off her 3G data when she isn't using her phone? It can be a tough and self-limiting practice to start, but at least it may limit the data usage of the apps until we can figure out what is causing the bizarre amount of data being used.

Finally, is there a particular reason that she doesn't want to root the phone? Once rooted there are loads of other solutions we could look in to, such as installing a custom ROM and seeing if it makes a difference.

[javagreen]

the stock 4.0.4 rom has it

I see... looks like a pretty useful app, dunno why some custom ROM devs remove it, the paranoid JellyBean ROM dev, for example.

[The Teej]

I'd also contact your network operator/cell carrier to see if these figures are actually LEGITIMATE. It might be possible that things are getting a little mixed up and Facebook isn't entirely using what the phone says it's using. Just an idea.

[Elliot B.]

If you want to stop worrying about your Web usage, I recommend Three. All these have unlimited data:

Ultimate Internet SIM 200 1 month

200 minutes, 5000 texts, ?12.90 p/m

Ultimate Internet SIM 600 12 months

600 minutes, 5000 texts, ?15.90 p/m

Ultimate Internet SIM 600 1 month

600 minutes, 5000 texts, ?18.90 p/m

The One Plan 1 month SIM

2000 minutes, 5000 texts, 5000 Three-to-Three minutes, ?25 p/m

[TheLegendOfMart]

I see... looks like a pretty useful app, dunno why some custom ROM devs remove it, the paranoid JellyBean ROM dev, for example.

I'm using Paranoid JB4.1.2 on my note and its not an app in app drawer, its in settings under wifi.

[Mando]

Remove facebook from the device for a week and see if it really is the culprit.

ID say remove it for good, best thing I ever did was de-activate my facebook account.

[Wannes]

You guys are lucky to have such data plans. Down here they would not be affordable .. 10GB!

[javagreen]

I'm using Paranoid JB4.1.2 on my note and its not an app in app drawer, its in settings under wifi.

Weird, I don't have it, and that's where I looked for it :pinch:

[Mando]

I'm using Paranoid JB4.1.2 on my note and its not an app in app drawer, its in settings under wifi.

hows that coming along?, my notes still at stock ICS and was toying with rooting & Paranoid.

[Technique]

Really, the first round of "delete facebook" "facebook is rubbish" comments i just ignored, but they're coming a bit more frequent now

In short - don't waste your time as these comments don't help. She wont be deleting her facebook account any time soon. You don't like facebook? That's fine. You deleted your account? That's fine. This isn't you though, it's her & she wants to keep hers. End of.

How much of the Facebook data is used when the app is in the background? compared to the foreground?

If the majority of it is in the foreground then its her looking at photos / video i would guess, if its the background its Facebook syncing something.

She's tried uninstalling & re-installing to see if that will make a difference.

To answer your question, she doesn't view any videos & doesn't view many photos. She doesn't 'click on' the photos when they're in her news feed as they're generally big enough to see anyway. Here's the figures:

Facebook:

Mobile data from 1st Dec (when she topped up)...

Foreground: 114MB

Background: 9.90MB

As for over WiFi....

F/G: 22.96MB

B/G: 6.93MB

This info help you guys any?

I should point out that while her phone is connected via WiFi at home, she generally uses her Galaxy Tab for the net & Facebook at home.

[TheLegendOfMart]

hows that coming along?, my notes still at stock ICS and was toying with rooting & Paranoid.

Was a bit paranoid (pardon the pun) about going to Jellybean as ICS kernels have a bug that could damage the ROM if you did a factory reset, flashed a 'safe' kernel and its been running like a champ, very smooth and not had any stability issues.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Remove facebook from the device for a week and see if it really is the culprit.

ID say remove it for good, best thing I ever did was de-activate my facebook account.

Ignoring the last sentence, I would recommend doing the same thing. Not permanently, just short term while you make sure that the application is definitely the culprit. The idea of getting rid of Facebook for good is an individual decision, no one should be telling you that.

You guys are lucky to have such data plans. Down here they would not be affordable .. 10GB!

This might be digressing, but I would be interested to hear how much your data plans are going for. 10GB around here aren't exactly cheap, but I would not call them expensive. My job doesn't pay huge amounts and yet I don't mind paying a bit extra for an "unlimited" data plan.

[Chris123NT]

I have facebook on my S3 will full push notifications and don't have anywhere near that kind of data usage. You sure she's not just on facebook all day? I mean it seems plausable to me since her internet usage is over 100MB as well which means she DOES do a lot of browsing.

[Chris123NT]

Really, the first round of "delete facebook" "facebook is rubbish" comments i just ignored, but they're coming a bit more frequent now

In short - don't waste your time as these comments don't help. She wont be deleting her facebook account any time soon. You don't like facebook? That's fine. You deleted your account? That's fine. This isn't you though, it's her & she wants to keep hers. End of.

She's tried uninstalling & re-installing to see if that will make a difference.

To answer your question, she doesn't view any videos & doesn't view many photos. She doesn't 'click on' the photos when they're in her news feed as they're generally big enough to see anyway. Here's the figures:

Yeah 114 MB foreground, which means that is data consumed while the app is open with her actively using it, background data is for push notifications etc... So she's on Facebook a lot on her phone by the looks of it. You can't blame the phone for that.

[typu]

with so much foreground data she is using facebook intensively. i hardly believe that there is any malfunctioning of the phone. if it was background data, ok, but foreground? if she keeps her using pattern then she better upgrades her data plan.

[Noir Angel]

Comparing her baseline usage with yours is a bit fallacious when you're likely to have different usage patterns. I've never seen any real evidence that Android phones are any worse than any other for data usage. You want to do a real world comparison then get a fully wiped S3 and follow the same usage pattern you would on your iPhone and then compare the situations.

[dancedar]

You've posted that it's foreground FB app usage by way of it using lots of date in the screenshot and sync is turned off...she's using the app. Maybe it's downloading upon opening new updates and/or photos people have posted, that's how the new one gets photos to appear so fast. But really it's nothing to do with the phone...it's FB's app. That said, if it's reporting usage while mobile date is off well I'm not sure how that is as under JB they're integrated...it can't count data with mobile data off, just how it works.

(Paranoid Android JB user here, you have the option just go to settings and it's the third option down, Data Usage. They've changed the menus around a little.)

[Technique]

She uninstalled the app & then re-installed it. She then loaded it up & just scrolled.

This alone used up 2MB of data. Seems quite a lot for just this action.

Here's a screenshot of her Facebook settings:

If you need settings screenshots of other apps or whatever then let me know.

Doesn't look like anyone has been able to put their finger on the problem. The response of "she's using facebook a lot" may be true, but she's using it no more than when she had her iPhone & her iPhone didn't munch data. She could revert back to the iPhone right now, use the phone as normal & be ok.

EDIT: Just to note - application requests is ticked in the 2nd image. This must be the default setting as she had it unticked before uninstalling - as in the 3rd image.

[Chris123NT]

2 MB just scrolling the news feed isn't horrible. It has to download thumbnails of the pictures to show them on the feed etc...

[dancedar]

3GS 320x480 = 0.2MP

S3 1280x720 = 0.9MP

Screen sizes perhaps is why - the 3GS's screen is tiny in comparison, you're looking at images which are almost 5 times as large (in pixels) and thus use 5 times the data; you'd perhaps find the same usage jump if she had an iPhone5. First run will always use some date to sync lists, new stories etc. But really it's likely to be due to the paltry display being upgraded to 720p. What you need to check is if it's foreground or background usage. May as well leave all the sync/notifications on if she's going to actively use it as it'll be downloaded then anyway and the later use minuscule amounts.

If she's really worried about going over she could disable background date usage for FB, only use it actively on Wifi, but use the mobile website through Opera Mini or the browser as it can load without images (opera will compress them nicely too)