Alright, finally revisiting this thread. I wanted to complete my previous billing cycle and then through most of the current one in order to take a look at my data usage. Now that we have datasense thanks to GDR2, it has shed some light on data usage (although doesn't quite help me unravel the past).
First billing period:
Average data used per day before I blocked all background tasks: 37.2mb (2/3 of billing period)
Average data used per day after blocking all background tasks: 7.35mb* (last 1/3 of billing period)
Total data used: 884.05mb (735.28mb over first 2/3 of billing period, 148.77mb over last 1/3)
* There was a "freak" day where I somehow used 103.67mb, I have omitted from the average.
Second billing period: (9 days remaining as of this post)
Average data per day (bg tasks continued to be blocked): 6.64mb (exactly first 1/2 of billing period - 15 days)
Reset phone in order to activate datasense, no longer blocked any tasks.
Average data per day after reset: 11.75mb* (the 6 days previous to today).
*Note that I blocked WPCentral a few days ago, I forgot to make note of which day that I blocked it on.
Observations from datasense:
- WPCentral is my most significant data using background task. My only guess is that it downloads new articles and their images in the background as it updates the count on the live tile? Without even checking wpcentral, it will accumulate over 4mb per day. When I reset my phone and had to reinstall all my previous apps, I set wpcentral to medium image quality, prior to that, the app was set to "high". I wonder how much more data might be used when image quality is set to "high". I blocked it a few days ago, but considering that I've only used 219mb and have nearly 800mb left for the next 9 days, I will unblock it.
- Metrotube uses a few mb's of data over a few days in the background as a small tile in which nothing is updating (only a live tile on medium and double wide modes). I have blocked it.
I added the new bing apps (News, Finance, Sport, Weather) after resetting my phone:
- Bing sports uses the most data (between 1-2 mb per day) in the background.
- Bing finance seems to use approximately 1mb per day in the background.
- Bing weather appears to use less than 1mb per day in the background.
- Bing news has only used 2mb in 6 days in the background. I only have it set to use 4 sources: CBC News, BBC News, Reuters, and Gizmodo.
System has used 15mb over 6 days. No clue what the system is specifically doing to use data, even such as overnight when the phone is idle.
Conclusions:
Based on datasense and my data usage so far during this billing period, I am no longer worried about live tiles using up all my data, lol. I wish I could know what was using so much data when I first got my phone in June. Scary that if I hadn't have checked my usage on the Bell website, I would have blown past my 1gig limit. All of my original apps which I had blocked (listed in the first post) hardly use any data other than wpcentral.
I didn't have the live tile on for GoPro since originally blocking it on July 12th until today. Maybe that was the problem app? Datasense will reveal the truth.
Final note: Looking forward to the next billing period, when I'll be able to have the Bell website counter and datasense starting at the same time. It'll be interesting to see if they match up perfectly. When I started datasense, I was already half way into this billing period. Datasense currently accounts for 112mb of the 219mb used this month. I had 99.67mb used on the Bell website when I reset my phone. So there is an 8mb discrepancy, which I'll attribute to the reset / restore of the phone maybe not being counted under datasense??
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