Looking for tips to keep data usage down

I'm a fairly new iPhone owner and today marks the start of my provider's new billing cycle. As a result, I reset my data usage stats on the phone this morning.

Before purchasing the phone I did a little research on data usage and a lot of the message boards were filled with comments like "I use tons of email and surf a lot, and I only ever use about 400MB a month".

Well here I am, one day in, and I'm at 12MB (upload + download). Now by my calculations 500MB is about 16.7MB a day but here's the thing....it felt like I did very little on my phone today - not sure where the 12MB came from

I browsed some pictures on flickr today using the flickr app, went on Facebook 2-3 times and looked at maybe 4-5 pages, visited about 12 websites (mostly full HTML) and sent an email or two. Should that really add up to 12MB?

*** UPDATE ***
I just went onto my providers web page and their reporting (this is going to sound weird) significantly LOWER data usage than my iPhone (see below). I've used 12MB today according to my phone and my provider is reporting almost 3MB, granted it may not be updated yet. Having said that, the one text message I sent today was about 15 mins ago.

Still, I'm sure I used more data on Jan 10 than 3MB. I don't know...I'll have to keep close tabs on this until I figure out what's going on.

11-Jan-2010 Text Messages 1 Messages $0.00
11-Jan-2010 Data Usage 2977 Kilobytes $0.00
10-Jan-2010 Text Messages 15 Messages $0.00
10-Jan-2010 Data Usage 2723 Kilobytes $0.00
9-Jan-2010 Text Messages 12 Messages $0.00
9-Jan-2010 Data Usage 648 Kilobytes $0.00


Are there any tips to keep your data usage to a minimum? Are there any apps that are famous for being data hogs?

As a possible future iPhone owner, I'm curious how much data the average person uses in a month.

I avg 3.6 gig a month over the last 28 months.

Hope it helps
Clay

clayneal said:

I avg 3.6 gig a month over the last 28 months.

Hope it helps
Clay

Click to expand...

That seems high. I'm curious how many hours that translates into per day.
From what I've seen on a few carriers' websites, "Unlimited Data" really means 5GB limit per month. Darn fine print.

MYmacROX said:

That seems high. I'm curious how many hours that translates into per day.
From what I've seen on a few carriers' websites, "Unlimited Data" really means 5GB limit per month. Darn fine print.

Click to expand...

Well to be fair , that does include a 7 month stretch where the iPhone was my only " computer ". Also as a field service tech I spend a lot of time online with it reviewing tech manuals and install guides as well as my addiction to Mac-Forums !;P

Clay

Mine only comes with 500mb a month and I only use about 300 megs and i'm on my 3G all the time. Not sure how one can use a few gigs what are you doing downloading torrents? live on the phone?

Tips:

*Turn off "push" notifications.
*Be aware of apps that may continue functioning in the background, for example IM apps will keep you "logged in" (and thus receive data) if you don't log out.
*Take advantage of public Wifi hotspots where possible.