Ow Kah Leong writes:
I have been using my Lumia 1520 for more than a year now, which translates to the same period that I have been in the Windows Phone ecosystem. It is well known that the WP ecosystem is well behind Android and iOS. Therefore, while there is an abundance of apps to track mobile data usage for Android and iOS, I hit a stone wall in Windows Phone.
Data Sense, I hear you say. Yes, the built-in app is good in tracking overall usage within a stated period and notifying if the stated cap is near. It also gives a breakdown by wifi and mobile data and by application. But what I needed was to have a breakdown of data usage by days. Data allowance from my carrier is shrinking with every contract renewal and hence there's a need to do some form of rationing in terms of usage. I decided to dig around in the Store and found Daily Data Sense.
The app itself is simple, with simple settings. Let's look at the different screenshots of the 3 views of data usage.
From left to right, the 3 views are Today, History and Overview. You can either swipe or tap on the headings to check the views. Today and History show a breakdown by Cellular and Wi-fi, and then by Received, Sent and Total. History further lists the data usage on a daily basis (the screenshot shows only 2 days as I took the screenshots after a couple of day's use). Finally, Overview shows how much data is consumed out of the limit set by me. This brings me to the Settings screen below:
Not much to play with here. You can set different limits for Cellular and Wi-fi and also the warning level. The last two functions for the app are Live Tile and Notification, as shown in the screenshots below:
How do I use the app? Besides the daily rationing that I mentioned earlier, I have also used it when I use data roaming. My carrier offers a cheap monthly data roaming plan of 1GB to Malaysia. I would not want to reset the data limit for Data Sense, so I would use the app to track the usage over the period I’m in Malaysia.
When searching for Daily Data Sense, I also found another useful little app for mobile data – Mobile Data Notifier. See the screenshot below:
There are only 3 settings to play with: 'Notify when using mobile data', 'Notify when roaming' and 'Notify when high network usage'. The last setting requires an in-app purchase. I don’t really need that and am happy with just the first two. There will be a toast notification, for example, once I’m on mobile data. This is useful as my house has some areas when wifi sometimes just drops off and I know when I’m on mobile data.
Sure Android and iOS have many useful apps but the Windows Phone Store does have its fair share too. The Store has come a long way with developers continuing to churn out useful apps like these two. Now Microsoft has to deliver on its promise of Windows 10 and see how the store may look in a year’s time.