As it turns out, a lot is covered, which is fortunate given the monthly cost. We have unlimited anytime minutes (between Sprint customers), anytime mobile (any mobile phone), text, night & weekend, picture mail, 3G data, and even 3G data roaming. That's pretty sweet. And between the two of us, we only used 214 of our allotted 1,500 monthly minutes. But there some interesting nuggets in the rows of numbers on my bill.
For instance, The Other Half used 39,163 3G data minutes. Downloading porn, no doubt (kidding, honey). That's a lot, right? Then, I looked at mine: 100,609 minutes! Holy crap! What is my phone doing when I'm not using it? It's either in my pocket or on my desk about 98% of the time. And. . .wait. . .how many minutes are in a month, anyway?
31 days X 24 hours X 60 minutes = 44,640 minutes.
Soooo, either Sprint's math is way off, or the row of numbers on my bill represents something other than minutes. The column is headed "Used," and lists other things that are clearly minutes. But it lists 292 under texts for me, which must be a total number (but sounds a bit too high). So, it could be megabytes, gigabytes, hell Sprint-bucks for all I know. I'm just happy I have unlimited. . .whatever they are.
If you don't close your browser application before you put your phone down (if you just lock your screen, or switch to phone mode, for instance), the last page you visited may keep updating, which may be why your phone is using so much data. At least, that's the case with my phone (I'm not familiar with the newer smartphones).
ReplyDeleteMy Epic 4G Android phone is constantly using apps, often with no prompting from me. I actually downloaded an "app killer" to try to save battery juice. Every time I've tried it, it's had at least 5 apps to kill. So I'm fortunate that I'm "unlimited," considering I have NO idea how to make it stop doing that!
ReplyDeleteThose aren't minutes, they're kilobytes!
ReplyDeleteAre they? Well, they're not designated on the bill as anything but a number. They make no distinction between any of the items on the bill, so how would a person know?
ReplyDeleteCommon sense is not so common anymore. Your data plan has always been charged by the kilobyte, since the first cellphone that offered internet came out.
ReplyDeleteWell--anonymous--they're just rows of numbers, and seemingly wildly out of scale to reality, whatever they measure. Example: when I had an HTC Evo and my husband had the Samsung Epic, my usage was always 4 or 5 times higher than his. Since we both switched to Samsung Galaxy 4Gs, the usage numbers have flipped, even though we pretty much use them the same way. It's all academic, since we're on an unlimited plan, but something to keep an eye on if they ever take that way from us.
ReplyDeleteAnd since I have only ever had a data plan since 2009, I'm not sure how I would have "commonly" known that.