Find misbehaving app?

[elkstreet]

I checked my data usage on my AT&T Titan and found that every evening between 10:00 and 10:30pm (I am not on the phone then) something on my phone is using about 4-6 mb of bandwidth over cellular eventhough I have wifi enabled. Since I have the lowest data plan, I need to figure out which app is doing this.

Anyone have an idea on someway I can tell who the culprit is?

 

[enahs555]

The data on the att website is not really at that specific time, but it is for chunks of time and when they bill you. It is not likely using 4-6mb in that 30 min, but over the previous 4 hours period and "billing" you then.

How many live tiles do you have running? How many email accounts and checking how often?

Go to settings, swipe over to applications, and click background tasks, anything turned on you do not want/use?

 

[martin_strahilovski]

The data on the att website is not really at that specific time, but it is for chunks of time and when they bill you. It is not likely using 4-6mb in that 30 min, but over the previous 4 hours period and "billing" you then.

How many live tiles do you have running? How many email accounts and checking how often?

Go to settings, swipe over to applications, and click background tasks, anything turned on you do not want/use?

Maybe he has some background task that he can't turn it off. So, in that way, just uninstall that app.

 

[jimski]

Most, but not all of the background tasks that can't be turned off relate to music apps that will run in the background when active. So no issue with with data usage when not turned on. If you are on a limited data plan, you can turn off data when you don't need it specifically and WiFi will update your phone every two hours in the background. Not as instant as data, but will save you a bunch of mb's.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[Diamondx_8]

The same things happens to me everyday. I have my phone set to automatically connect to my home wifi and everyday at the exact same time I have a large amount of data usage. I should not be using the AT&T network during these times. I also check to make sure I am connected to wifi every night. So I called AT&T and they told me there are certain types of actions that will charge against the AT&T data plan regardless of wifi like updating, etc. because that interacts with AT&T's servers. That makes no sense to me at all but this is what they told me. For me, it's about 25mb to 32mb at a time which seems like a lot.

 

[Red Lemur]

A long winded (but probably easiest) way would be to uninstall all your suspect apps and then add them back in one by one, i.e. one per day at the time you mention, monitoring as you go. Also make sure you check whilst there are no apps on (to check if something in the operating system is doing it).

A more advanced way would be to set it to wifi only then monitor your router's incoming / outgoing network packets using a program such as WireShark - but this isn't an easy process.

Good luck finding it.

 

[elkstreet]

Does sound like a weak answer from AT&T. I have turned off data now, but of course, no text messages! Still looking for an answer.

The same things happens to me everyday. I have my phone set to automatically connect to my home wifi and everyday at the exact same time I have a large amount of data usage. I should not be using the AT&T network during these times. I also check to make sure I am connected to wifi every night. So I called AT&T and they told me there are certain types of actions that will charge against the AT&T data plan regardless of wifi like updating, etc. because that interacts with AT&T's servers. That makes no sense to me at all but this is what they told me. For me, it's about 25mb to 32mb at a time which seems like a lot.

 

[elkstreet]

The data on the att website is not really at that specific time, but it is for chunks of time and when they bill you. It is not likely using 4-6mb in that 30 min, but over the previous 4 hours period and "billing" you then.

How many live tiles do you have running? How many email accounts and checking how often?

Go to settings, swipe over to applications, and click background tasks, anything turned on you do not want/use?

From my reading, it looks like the issue is that when the phone goes to sleep it disables wifi so any updates or email or ? will use cellular. Guess there needs to be some changes to WP7 that to prevent wifi from being disabled.

Personally, I'd like to see it so that it never disables wifi so that it always uses wifi when a connection is active.

 

[jimski]

Ok. #1. AT&T typically charges data MBs to your account once or twice a day. The time of day this occurs has nothing to do with your data usage or apps you may be using. It is cumulative for the past 12 or 24 hours. Otherwise, there would be hundreds of entries per day.
#2. Text messaging does not use data. It uses your voice connection. So turning off data will not prevent you from sending/receiving texts.
#3. When your phone is set to WiFi only (data turned off) it actually does turn on briefly every two hours. Still testing as to what actually occurs, but I have watched my mail accounts get updated in repeated tests with data turned off.
#4. Be careful what you wish for. WiFi always on wild be a tremendous drain on battery. With Wifi sleeping in the background, and turning on briefly every two hours, its maybe 3-4% battery drain per day. On all the time, multiply that by 10 or more.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

 

[Diamondx_8]

Ok. #1. AT&T typically charges data MBs to your account once or twice a day. The time of day this occurs has nothing to do with your data usage or apps you may be using. It is cumulative for the past 12 or 24 hours. Otherwise, there would be hundreds of entries per day.
#2. Text messaging does not use data. It uses your voice connection. So turning off data will not prevent you from sending/receiving texts.
#3. When your phone is set to WiFi only (data turned off) it actually does turn on briefly every two hours. Still testing as to what actually occurs, but I have watched my mail accounts get updated in repeated tests with data turned off.
#4. Be careful what you wish for. WiFi always on wild be a tremendous drain on battery. With Wifi sleeping in the background, and turning on briefly every two hours, its maybe 3-4% battery drain per day. On all the time, multiply that by 10 or more.

Sent from my HTC Surround using Board Express

Thanks Jimski. That was very informative.