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First smartphone - how much data?

Defcon5

Defcon5

Defcon5

Soldato
Joined
4 Sep 2005
Posts
6,424
Location
Whitwood, West Yorks
I apologise, for the last few years I have been living in the dark ages with an ancient mobile (my last good phone was an N95!)

I will be inheriting by GFs Samsung Galaxy S soon, so will want a sim only tariff to suit.

Her contract has unlimited internet, will I need this? She says its 'always connected', but she was told that by the guy in the shop so could mean anything!

I currently has an O2 sim only that gives me enough mins and texts for about a tenner a month, and they do bolt ons of either 500mb or 1gb of data for £6/£10 a month. Would this be ok? What actually uses data? I dont use facebook or anything, just sending recieving emails and looking a youtube type stuff really.

I have been with O2 for literally a decade, so if there are any offers by other providers Im sure their retentions team will match it

Thanks

Tom
 
On my Galaxy Nexus, I used 148mb in December. I only let application updates happen when the wireless is on. I've used youtube a handful of times, the rest is just forums / facebook etc

Think I've got 3gb a month.

I'd try 500 for now and get more if you need it, there'll be a data counter on the phone
 
You're on O2 and spend 10, switch to giffgaff. £10 250mins, and truly unlimited Internet and texts. Runs on the O2 network.

Depends what you do. 1gb for me is more than enough most of the time, but was annoying when I was stuck outside and trying to watch an f1 race on 3G, got about halfway through before it Totaly ran out. Not a normal occurrence. But why pay £16 when for £10 you can get unlimited.
 
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Glaucus said:
You're on O2 and spend 10, switch to giffgaff. £10 250mins, and truly unlimited Internet and texts. Runs on the O2 network.

Depends what you do. 1gb for me is more than enough most of the time, but was annoying when I was stuck outside and trying to watch f1 race on 3G, got about halfway through before it Totaly run out. Not a normal occurrence. But why pay £16 when for £10 you can get unlimited.
Click to expand...

I was just coming to post giffgaff. They're really quite good.
 
Glaucus said:
You're on O2 and spend 10, switch to giffgaff. £10 250mins, and truly unlimited Internet and texts. Runs on the O2 network.

Depends what you do. 1gb for me is more than enough most of the time, but was annoying when I was stuck outside and trying to watch an f1 race on 3G, got about halfway through before it Totaly ran out. Not a normal occurrence. But why pay £16 when for £10 you can get unlimited.
Click to expand...

Wow thats really good, Ive never even heard of them!
 
I actually have stats for this as it's a big thing in projection of network resource. The majority of first time smartphone users use a lot in month 1 and then it goes down to 150-250MB PCM. The younger you are, the more data you'll use (apply a scalar of about x1.5 for under 25), the more technical your job the more you'll use too. As time goes on you'll discover more apps that take data often and usage goes up about 30% over a contract.

Considering your lack of desire to get a new phone in the past and the previous model you had being high end I'm going to say you're probably going to fall into the average field for data usage today - you probably see it as a nice to have and you'll use it once you have access to it but you never felt you required it before so you probably won't be a hardcore data user for the first few months.
 
I usually use only about 100mb a month. I don't really travel enough, and when I do it's just too slow/too spotty to get much decent coverage.
 
i have under 500mb a month i think , rarely use half of it especially if you have wifi in your house (for market dl/updates). With o2 they dont charge you for going over they just reduce the speed of your connection.
 
Easily I'm afraid. Spotify, Pandora, youtube mobile HD, normal web pages over mobile, Google Music, Radio streaming etc... and that's not even counting tethering, torrents and the like.
 
Ah but you see, it's becoming that. It's interesting you call it a PC when all of those services don't require one (I'll admit, the pandora thing requires a bit more technical prowess than the rest though) and the screen on the most recent top of the line phone is the same as a lot of low end laptops.

It's true, a small proportion of users use about 50% of data, but that's another thread topic really. My personal usage isn't this bad but my testing handset usage is pretty horrific :)
 
i was sceptical about only having 500mb a month, and I use my phone all day, never touched the limit yet, not even close :\ after the initial excitement of bringing up flash videos etc, you calm down anyways
 
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