Ouch, nearly 200mb gobbled up in minutes

I have a new 4G phone, a Samsung Galaxy Ace 4 on EE, after upgrading from Orange

In the past I found that 500Mb of data was plenty for what little I use so that's what I went for this time. Normally I'm at home and the phone links to wifi anyway.

But, a friend was talking about 4G speeds locally and what he got on his phone so I knocked the wifi off and went to the speedtest.net app on the phone. I ran half a dozen tests and was amazed to see my available data was down to 308mb

Sure enough, when I looked at data usage, it was the speedtest app that had gobbled it up - ouch !

Needless to say I've put the phone back to wifi now and will be very wary of what data I use on the move...

In reply to a post by TMCR:

Needless to say I've put the phone back to wifi now and will be very wary of what data I use on the move...

You will be fine as long as you avoid speed tests and YouTube.

These two apps use more data the faster the speed is. YouTube gives you better quality pictures with higher speed, and speed test needs to use more when the speed increases to get you a reliable number.

Email, Facebook/Twitter, Photos, etc will use the same amount of data.

The way I see it is 2 options.

Upgrade to a better usage plan but will probably not use it 95% of the time so waste of money.

Keep on current usage plan and just pay for the extra GB as of when you need it. Seems the most sane way. The price for this method isnt much more expensive than paying it as part of contract.

My limit does allow for reasonable usage anyway if excluding streaming.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Keep on current usage plan and just pay for the extra GB as of when you need it. Seems the most sane way. The price for this method isnt much more expensive than paying it as part of contract.

SIM only users were denied this recently. The EE addon website only now shows 100mb for a day option. Nothing else. I wrote to the Exec's office asking why SIM only users were treated as 2nd class citizens, and had a nice reply back saying comments noted and passed on to marketing team.

Annoying that you have to buy a subsidised phone on 24m contract to get a sensible price plan, when SIM only is 12m contract.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

The way I see it is 2 options.

I see three options....

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Upgrade to a better usage plan but will probably not use it 95% of the time so waste of money.

Correct

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Keep on current usage plan and just pay for the extra GB as of when you need it. Seems the most sane way. The price for this method isnt much more expensive than paying it as part of contract.

Could do but the third option is just not to run speed tests if they gobble data like that.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

The EE addon website only now shows 100mb for a day option. Nothing else.

I found this page: http://ee.co.uk/content/dam/ee-help/e-gain.s3.amazon...
add-ons
UK Data, 1 day-100mb £1.99, 1 week-1GB £5.99, end of bill cycle-10GB £15.99

In reply to a post by TMCR:

I found this page: http://ee.co.uk/content/dam/ee-help/e-gain.s3.amazon...
add-ons
UK Data, 1 day-100mb £1.99, 1 week-1GB £5.99, end of bill cycle-10GB £15.99

On your phone switch off WiFi and go to http://add-on.ee.co.uk/purchase

On my SIM only contract I only get this:
http://i.imgur.com/O49gdl5.png

The other choices existed until about the middle of 2014, and its a very odd decision

In reply to a post by jchamier:

On your phone switch off WiFi and go to http://add-on.ee.co.uk/purchase

I am on a contract so it shows me the three options, 1 day-100mb £1.99, 1 week-1GB £5.99, end of bill cycle-10GB £15.99

Just to add a smile to my story, and use the old phrase 'he who laughs last laughs loudest' - I did the speed tests on day 2 of having my new phone. As I've moved from Orange to EE they've made it a new contract and on Wednesday issued a first EE bill, which meant that I started a new allocation of minutes, texts and data, re-setting the 500mb to full again. The 200mb speedtest usage was on 'last month' which only consisted of 3 days

Yeah, the 4G tariffs are fun like that.

I trialled GiffGaff's 4G offerings for 2 months when their 1GB 4G goodybag was the same cost as the 3G one (£10), which is what I normally get. I found that my data usage was considerably higher on 4G simply for the fact that when browsing down my Facebook app, for example, it was able to more instantaneously start buffering up and playing videos. In fact for those 2 months, I marginally exceeded my 1GB limit.

After the initial trial period, cost for 4G 1GB goodybag went up to the normal price of £12 so I've now switched back to my original £10 3G goodybag, and no longer have this problem.

There should be smarter options on phones now to help manage the faster speeds that 4G provides, though I'm not exactly sure how that would work.

In reply to a post by TMCR:

I am on a contract so it shows me the three options, 1 day-100mb £1.99, 1 week-1GB £5.99, end of bill cycle-10GB £15.99

Thats what I used to get. I am also on a contract. EE seem to think SIM only contracts are second class citizens, although they should make more money on us.

Just to add a smile to my story, and use the old phrase 'he who laughs last laughs loudest' - I did the speed tests on day 2 of having my new phone. As I've moved from Orange to EE they've made it a new contract and on Wednesday issued a first EE bill, which meant that I started a new allocation of minutes, texts and data, re-setting the 500mb to full again. The 200mb speedtest usage was on 'last month' which only consisted of 3 days

Nice