Watchdog can help you save on 3G data plans

3G Watchdog is a very useful and easy to use reporting widget which monitors your 3G/GPRS/ Edge data usage. This android widget also shows a stats icon which can be either orange, red or green depending on your data usage in the notification bar which is detailed on the report page. In addition you can also set up what percentage of your internet data usage quota you will want the widget to warn you at. This means that if you want to be informed if you’ve reached 75% of your quota the widget will notify you as soon as you do.
3G Watchdog Widget and how it works?
The first step to using the widget is to configure your quota. You need to set up a weekly, monthly and daily amount depending on your existing data plan. The widget allows you to set up the frequency of the update. The refresh rate of the widget can be set up between 30 seconds to one notification every hour. The developers recommend that you keep the notifications limited to around thirty minutes or more in order to save battery life even though they are certain that the polling does not drain a lot of battery power when set even at its highest polling rate i.e. 30 seconds.
In addition to you can choose if or not the notification icon will appear in your phone’s status bar by selecting from the following options: always visible, visible when 3G is active and never visible. When you click on the Watchdog widget you can see exactly how much of your quota you have used and the total you currently have sent/ received monthly, weekly and daily.
When you tap the Menu option you’ll have the following settings to tap on to select:
• ‘Day traffic History’: this option details your usage limited to the past 31 days recorded.
• Check the counters for today: The traffic usage limited the month is listed here usually limited to 31 days.
• ‘See counters for today’: You can see how much data you have sent and received today.
• Traffic history quota: You can check the sent and received data categorized by date. This can also be exported as an excel compatible CSV file.
• Set up Quota Counters: Here you can manually set up exactly how much data you currently have sent and received
• Setup weekly counters
• Setup monthly counters
If you’re worried about how much data you’re consuming or being hit with an unexpectedly high data usage bill then this Watchdog widget is the thing for you. Being able to actively monitor your usage will also help you steer clear of unwanted data consumption which should help keep your costs within bearable financial range.