Tuesday, July 30, 2013

iOS 7 feature Gem : Cellular Data Usage statistics


I have been beta testing iOS 7 since the day it became available (seed 1) . It has been a rough ride from seed 1 to seed 4, but it seems were  through the worst of it.

Good news is that now the experience is finally starting to pay dividends, beyond reducing friction in my daily iPhone use habits in terms of numbers of taps and swipes that it takes to achieve key tasks.

Some of the less visible feature gems in iOS 7 are now bearing fruit. My favorite one is the Cellular Data Usage statistics view in Settings  -> Cellular -> @ bottom of screen.

Today i learned alot about my true data usage footprint. Below is a summary. As iOS 7 rolls out to the public, many iOS users will become aware for the first time how their data gets consumed. This will be an interesting market epiphany that may create waves in how tens to hundreds of millions of people purchase cellular data from their favorite carrier.

My footprint was measured from June 12, 2013  - July 30, 2013
The measured period is 6 weeks, the green highlighted numbers are adjusted to 30 days of usage.
(Please note this is strictly the Cellular data usage, and does not inclde Wi-Fi usage at all.)
Total Data Usage in the period:                                     1.3 GB cellular  (adj 813 MB)
Total Data Used by Apps in the period :                        1.1 GB cellular   (adj 687.6 MB)
Total Data Used by System Services in the period :     208 MB cellular (adj 130 MB)

Apps that consumed data:    56 apps
Biggest App consumption : 342 MB Safari of cellular usage (adj 214 MB )
Smallest App consumption: 2.1 KB WhatsApp of cellular usage 

System Services:                      21 Services
Biggest Service consumption : 115 MB iTunes Accounts (adj 72 MB)
Smallest Service consumption: 6.1 KB Find My iPhone

BTW a fortechiesonly reader requested to see what happens when you switch Cellular data off for an app, turn off wifi, and try to launch that app. iOS shows you a "Cellular Data is Turned Off for "app" " dialogue, check it out in the new Screenshot on the right :)

 




4 comments:

  1. Hey, what's exchange accounts? it's using a lot of data like 1 MB per minute, in a day it wasted like 256 MB.

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  2. exchange accounts is mail . For example at my work , we use microsoft exchange servers. It is constantly checking with the server if you have something new , and if there is something new downloads it in the background. you should be able to disable this "syncing" behavior in mail settings.

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  3. Great post! Could you post a list (or screenshots) showing the cellular data used for each of the "System Services"? I have a VERY limited data plan (100 MB), and in iOS 6 I have just left cellular data off except when checking voicemail. I want to make sure I would stay under my limit if I disabled cellular data in iOS 7 for everything except "System Services". (Do you know if there is any way to disable cell data for particular system services? And do you know if there is a list someplace that explains what all of the System Services are, such as "Home Screen" and "Cellular Services"?) Thanks!

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