Best Data Usage Widget? Thanks, Verizon. Sigh

[jackiescivic]

Complete and utter bs that they disabled the auto-refresh. Absolutely no reason to have it as a widget any longer. I had to update it yesterday. There's no way of getting around it

 

[Mike.757]

Not that it is by any means a fix. When you select the data widget and it opens up a new window, just hit the back button. It will update the widget info and you don't have to wait for all the other stuff (insert a 4 letter word here) to load.

 

[nullvalue]

3rd party version available

I've recently completed a set of widgets for android which automatically update the usage in the background. You can find them on the Play Store here..
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hoeksoft.minute.widget.verizon

As the developer, I can tell you I did a fair amount of reverse engineering to figure out how to get at this data. I can say I'm pretty certain the sole reason their version of the widget doesn't refresh automatically is they want you to go over your limit and owe them even more money.. There is nothing in the data that points to any reason why they had to pull the old version of the widget.. hopefully this fills a gap and $0.99 is reasonable for the amount of time I put into the development.

 

[TriciaH]

I have noticed that the data "widget" amount and the data used in settings for the same time period are not the same...they are not even close. Almost 200 mg difference between what Verizon says I have used and what the phone says I have used. This could be expensive for those on a tiered data plan. I also think the self-updating widget was better than this new piece of junk that takes forever to actually get to the numbers you are looking for.

 

[TheDroidURLookinFor]

Yeah my guess would have been they stopped the auto refresh due to it using up data doing it. Though I think they should have given us an option to turn it back on for those on unlimited plans.

EDIT: Forgot to add app...https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.onavo.android.onavoid

My brother has this app on my teen aged nephews phones so they don't go over their metered plans. He swears by it. Very simple UI.

 

[nullvalue]

Yeah my guess would have been they stopped the auto refresh due to it using up data doing it.

They could easily filter their own servers out of the billing.. not to mention, the data packet that moves across when you check your plan is only about 20KB. Updating every 15 minutes, sure that'd add up.. but it could update every 4 hours.. That'd average a little over 3MB/month.

My app refreshes every 2 hours.

 

[nullvalue]

My brother has this app on my teen aged nephews phones so they don't go over their metered plans. He swears by it. Very simple UI.

BTW, this might work well for a single-line plan but how would it monitor others in the family on a plan sharing from the same pool of data? You may only have used 200 MB but your daughter may have been watching netflix on the bus and run up GB's of data...