How long does a gig of data usually last you?

[Quagmire]

I use 1 gigabyte per week, on my mobile and on my laptop both.

I only browse Ebay, RF, gmail and google, but I do spend about an hour per day on both.

Thanks for the input.

I just went to YouTube and watched 11 minutes of video's, searched a few things after and my data went from 23209mb to 23215mb. I used 6mb during that probably 13 minute time.

Thanks for giving me a point of reference. Like I said, looks like I need to keep shopping.

 

[Quagmire]

You probably could. Though keep in mind, just clicking on an embedded YouTube video on the forum, or a video on Youtube.... well there goes 500MB. Lol.

Found that out the hard way.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

One interesting aspect is your phone's video reduction feature and whether it's turned on. Carriers these days often have something which takes over which reduces the resolution of the video further while on mobile data to save data while playing video. And it seems like the better the carrier and the more expensive the phone, just seems like the more it's implemented, sometimes.

Also, that 500MB figure might have been a slight exaggeration. For me it's often 20-500MB. 500MB would be more like a hour and a half long documentary.

 

[Quagmire]

One interesting aspect is your phone's video reduction feature and whether it's turned on. Carriers these days often have something which takes over which reduces the resolution of the video further while on mobile data to save data while playing video. And it seems like the better the carrier and the more expensive the phone, just seems like the more it's implemented, sometimes.

Also, that 500MB figure might have been a slight exaggeration. For me it's often 20-500MB. 500MB would be more like a hour and a half long documentary.

A cpl years ago when I started using my first hot spot device I used up about a gig and a quarter of my 4 Gig a month allowance downloading one movie.

Live and learn.

 

[sun rise]

Mine goes up and down wildly. I look at my data use per app (Android - I don't know about iPhone) and saw last time that Google news was the culprit - it was downloading lots and lots of video I did not watch. This past month Google News consumed 1.37G. The next largest was 131M.

 

[Brickjectivity]

I know data use-rate is metered according to what you're doing rather than amount of time you're online, but typically, how long does it take you to use up a Gig of data on your phone?

Wondering because I've been trying out different off-brand cell-service providers for the last month or so, and I'm noticing a big difference in the time it takes to use up my data allowance doing basically the same things.

The plan I'm on now is using up about 100 mb per 10 minutes or so of basic browsing, which seems ridiculous to me.

*Edit: mean't 10 mb per 10 minutes or so.

It seems like a lot, but I know too that web sites have our computers do processing for themselves. They load our browsers with javascript, and it may exchange data with other servers in order to auction off advertising. Also, you've probably got a lot of social networking cookies like facebook, google and others; and every time you hit another site that site may have some code that registers your visit. Sometimes it takes a good while for some sites to load, such as news sites. If you guess at a transfer rate of about 10-15mb (some rate) per second and count sites and the amount of time it takes the page to load then it might add up to 10mb per minute. i don't know though. Many pages constantly refresh themselves, and that could contribute.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

although it varies based on what I'm doing/watching, generally about half a gig a day.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

I remember at some point I had to go through and set things like my news feeds and facebook to not autoload videos and to do other things to reduce usage...not that I remember what any of those things were...

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I know data use-rate is metered according to what you're doing rather than amount of time you're online, but typically, how long does it take you to use up a Gig of data on your phone?

Wondering because I've been trying out different off-brand cell-service providers for the last month or so, and I'm noticing a big difference in the time it takes to use up my data allowance doing basically the same things.

The plan I'm on now is using up about 100 mb per 10 minutes or so of basic browsing, which seems ridiculous to me.

*Edit: mean't 10 mb per 10 minutes or so.

About 2 days on average. My usage varies massively depending on how much I'm hotspotting for work, and whether I'm driving (podcasts/music streaming) or training (movies).

 

[Quagmire]

Thanks for all the info everybody.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Ah. I always use public wifi to download videos and music, rather than streaming so I'm thinking I could probably get away with an 8 to 10 gig a month plan.

I avoid streaming videos and music over data and I get by with 5 GB a month.

(Canadian data plans suck compared to US plans)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Mine goes up and down wildly. I look at my data use per app (Android - I don't know about iPhone) and saw last time that Google news was the culprit - it was downloading lots and lots of video I did not watch. This past month Google News consumed 1.37G. The next largest was 131M.

Instagram is pretty data-heavy for me. I try not to even have it running in the background when I'm not on wifi.

 

[Augustus]

Wondering because I've been trying out different off-brand cell-service providers for the last month or so, and I'm noticing a big difference in the time it takes to use up my data allowance doing basically the same things.

The plan I'm on now is using up about 100 mb per 10 minutes or so of basic browsing, which seems ridiculous to me.

Can't you check the data usage on your phone settings? (It's not pinpoint accuracy, but gives an idea).

I know data use-rate is metered according to what you're doing rather than amount of time you're online, but typically, how long does it take you to use up a Gig of data on your phone?

2Gb usually (easily) lasts me a month. Mostly just browsing and some short videos as I usually do anything heavy duty on home wifi.

1 Gb would do me for normal browsing based on what my phone says I've used with the rest on apps, streaming, etc.

I must spend at least 5 hours a week in taxis going to/from work and other places, and probably another hour a day at least using my phone, so that's probably around 40 hours. So browsing would be around 20Mb per hour on average.