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My phone is a galaxy Note II, I found out yesterday that I breached the 5 GB limit of data usage for the month when the carrier completely cut my data connections. I went to check the reported usage in the system settings and it just shows 687 MB used for the month, the highest usage app is facebook with just a little over 100 MB used.

Now here's some facts:

  • Running Ditto Note 3 v 3.2 (android 4.3) (based on XXUEMK9) (Baseband: N7100XXUEMJ9)
  • Never used tethering this month
  • I always keep 3G off at night and when I'm on WIFI

How do I find out what could have caused all this data usage? The detailed connections report from the carrier will come in 2 months so I can't know anything yet from that, I'd like to try and figure out something now.

I will be getting a data plan upgrade that will allow me 500 more MB for the month but I'm afraid that if I don't do something fast I might end up wasting all the data again, for now I'm planning of clean flashing the newest release of the rom but I'd like to know if there is some app that will let me monitor data usage in a more detailed way as it seems the built-in android graph doesn't record this hidden data that was used.

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  • In the meantime, get an app like 3G Watchdog, which I used when I wasn't on unlimited data. play.google.com/store/apps/…
    – user5506
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 12:41

2 Answers 2

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Turns out it was the carrier that messed up something as it seems I wasn't the only one to get this issue, so I didn't really use all that data.

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There's a difference between the amount of data reported from your device, and from what your carrier counts. Usually, that's minor; but with bad connections and frequent retries, the difference might get bigger:

Imagine you want to transfer a 10 MB file. Android counts 10 MB, and so usually does the carrier. But with a bad connection, and, say, all data-packages had to be re-transmitted 10 times until being transferred successfully, Android might still count a 10 MB file transfer, while your carrier sees 100 MB data traffic.

I've got to admit I don't know for sure how Android calculates data transfer here, so the above might not truly reflect it (though your description suggests something like that – or an error on your carrier's side, which you might wish to check with him). The "usual differences" are that the carrier calculates in "units" (e.g. "per 10 kB block"), while Android calculates the real size. Differences here are usually not much larger than 10% on average.

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  • I checked with the carrier and they confirmed I used 5 GB of data, I asked for the detailed reports but it will take two months to get my hands on them. Consider that I always used the phone the same way up until now, it's hard to believe that about 600 MB can translate into 5 GB in only 15 days.
    – Jackomel
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 14:19
  • Exactly my thought. To me, the most likely cause is the carriers "counter" went havoc. I cannot imagine how Android's statistics could be that far off. Unless some malware managed to bypass it, which I consider unlikely (but not impossible). But two month for giving details feels a bit strange as well; how shall you be able to compare that with your data then?
    – Izzy
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 15:20
  • I think something has gone wrong with the rom and caused this data usage, I hope somebody who is in the know of how android networking works can shed some light on the issue
    – Jackomel
    Commented Mar 17, 2014 at 16:05

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