Managing Phone Data

If you have a data limit on your iPhone plan it is important to know whether you are approaching your monthly limit. You might have a limit of say, 500 mb or 1 or 2 Gb. This data only counts against your limit if you load data via your cellular connection, while away from a wifi connection.

In Settings, open Mobile.
Mobile Data needs to be on, and Data Roaming Off. (Very important while overseas because if On any usage will be billed back to your local provider at very high rates. Always  leave it off unless overseas using a travel pre-paid SIM where you can safely roam.)

Personal Hotspot is sometimes very useful because it allows another device, like an iPad, to connect to the internet via this phone.

Current Period shows how much data has been downloaded since you commenced the period. You need to set a reminder to reset the data to 0 at the beginning of each month. This figure of 4.8MB is low because it was the first day of a month.

If you scroll down this screen you see all the apps and can switch them on or off to be able to download data while out and about. Once you settle on which ones to allow, you don't need to pay much attention to this, unless you are going close to your limit and may incur charges.

See 'battery' for more information.


The settings you choose will depend upon your habits. Some of the big data hogs are music, podcasts, maps, images and video. You can see on the image that Google Maps has used 7.6 Mb, which on the first day of a month amounted to going to one one location and viewing the satellite image.

After a week of usage you can view the total downloads and the score for individual apps and decide which apps to leave on or off for the remainder of the month.

You can of course switch an app on for a short period, like using Maps for a particular journey.


See post Overseas Connectivity (label overseas) for related information about using data overseas.