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I just bought the Samsung Galaxy 2 and my monthly data plan allows me 250MB.

I have Wi-Fi at home with 100GB of data per month.

Obviously, I want to use my home Wi-Fi as much as possible on my phone, and I have no trouble connecting my phone to it.

My question is:
How do I know if my phone is accessing my home Wi-Fi and not my phone company's network when I access the internet on my phone.

I can see that my phone is connected to my home Wi-Fi but it is also connected to my phone company's network at the same time. Is there a way to see when I am using my home Wi-Fi and when I am using my phone company's network?

I am worried that if my phone connects to the phone company's network and not my home Wi-Fi, then I will end up with a huge bill. I just want to make sure I am using my home Wi-Fi when I am accessing the internet on my phone.

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  • When you connect to Wi-Fi network, your EDGE/H/3G icon in status bar should be gone. It means, your mobile data isn't being used.
    – iOS
    Jan 25, 2014 at 7:10

4 Answers 4

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If you are connected via Wi-Fi, your phone will only use that connection. The only sort of data that would be required to use mobile data would be MMS (aka multimedia messages) everything else will operate with Wi-Fi if you have it.

One thing you'll also want to look into is the Wi-Fi sleep policy, to ensure you phone never disconnects from Wi-Fi if it is in range.

Go to: 

Settings → Wifi → Advanced (via menu button) → Sleep Policy

Set this to "never", so your phone will always use Wi-Fi (if available) when it's asleep.
This also saves battery as the distance between your Wi-Fi and your phone is a lot shorter than the phone mast and your phone!

Update
If you are that concerned about using mobile data, search the market for "APN Droid", which is an app that completely turns on/off your mobile data.

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  • Wi-fi uses more power as a 2G data connection and nearly the same amount (or even more) when using a 3G data connection. You can't tell that it uses less power just because of the distance.
    – Flow
    Jan 3, 2012 at 9:44
  • From my experience 3G data uses significantly more battery than wifi, I assumed because of the distance but there may be other factors.
    – Dunhamzzz
    Jan 3, 2012 at 10:31
  • It is very reassuring to know that the phone will only use wi-fi if it is connected to a wi-fi but is there a way to know this for sure!
    – Adhesh Josh
    Jan 3, 2012 at 22:39
  • I have updated my answer with the perfect solution for you!
    – Dunhamzzz
    Jan 4, 2012 at 0:34
  • I don't know if this a problem of Cyanogen or of my device, but even setting the sleep policy to "never", it switches off wifi when is sleeping.
    – Dielson Sales
    Sep 13, 2012 at 4:37
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There's an option to do this under Ice Cream Sandwich and later,

  • Go into Settings
  • Tap on Data Usage
  • Ensure that Mobile Data is activated, if not, a check-box stating Set mobile data limit will appear underneath, checking that will bring up a informational dialog box stating Limiting data usage.

Now the graph chart will have two sliders active amber (Warning) and red (Maximum), by moving the amber coloured bar, that is your Warning limit set.

And moving the red coloured bar, is your Maximum limit, set that to 250Mb max as per your case, and set the amber bar to around 230Mb as a warning and ICS/Jellybean will remind you that you are hitting the limit.

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Check your signal bar in the top right corner of the notification bar. If it displays the both the WiFi (quarter circle) and the 3G/HDSPA bar (right triangle), then your phone will prefer WiFi, otherwise it will use 3G/HDSPA. Also note that the WiFi signal bar is overlaid with small triangles when there is an active data transfer through WiFi and the phone signal bar is overlaid with similar triangle when there is an active data transfer through 3G/HDSPA. Also note that the when 3G is active, the phone signal bar is overlaid with 3G or H icon. Also note that when connected to WiFi, the 3G/H icon is missing from the phone signal bar, which shows that 3G/HDSPA has been disabled.

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You may appear to be connected to your Wi-Fi, but you may not be connected to the internet. It's possible that the internet is down.

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