With AT&T and Verizon getting rid of their unlimited data plans for new contracts and Sprint not far behind, it’ll be up to you to make sure you don’t go over your smartphone’s data usage and get hit with expensive fees. This week I’ve got free apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry that will monitor your usage and prevent any “sticker shock” on your next cell phone bill.
DataMan (iPhone), 3G Watchdog (Android), and Network Traffic Control (Blackberry) are all free apps that will monitor the data usage on your smartphone. You can set thresholds for usage and then get warnings when you’re getting close to exceeding them. You can also track data usage over time and if you have an iPhone, DataMan can even geo-tag the stats to measure where you tend to use the most data.
In full disclosure, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have their own apps for this as well, but they don’t update as frequently as these mentioned, so it’s possible you could still go over your data limits before you even know it. If you don’t have an unlimited data plan fees can go as high as $20 or more, so get an app and you won’t get caught off guard!
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