The internet has gone Pokémon crazy, and so have many of the Ausdroid writers (I’ve got 29 so far today). Many people are discussing the games ability to drain your battery, and believe us it does, or it’s relative instability, which believes us it is.
However, no one seems to be discussing that this is a connected game and as such it does use your data, perhaps this is obvious but we bet more than one person is going to get caught out. Now if you’re at home and on WiFi more than likely that’s not an issue – but the ‘Go’ in Pokémon Go involves you actually getting out there and being on the go to find Pokémon, so that’s not much of an option. If you’ve got lots of data, perhaps you just re-negotiated your plan, then you’re probably ok.
If however, you’re on a limited cap then you’re going to want to watch your data. I’m conservatively using about 50MB of data a day, and I’m not playing that much. 50mb x 30 days = 1.5 GB. We don’t think this will be a massive issue however if you’re not used to monitoring you daily data usage and you’ve got a limited cap or often get close to it perhaps now is the time to start.
The various carriers all have apps Optus: My Optus, Telstra: Telstra 24×7 and Vodafone Australia has My Vodafone. Each of these apps allow you to track your data usage pretty easily with a data widget you can place on your home screen.
There are other MVNOs on the market most of whom have their own apps as well, but without access to those we can’t show you – but suffice to say we’d love you to show them off below in the comments. And let us know – how much data have you blown catching mythical electronic creatures?
70mb for me over the last 5 days.
For those worried about data I would suggest getting a pocket mobile WiFi modem. Mobile data on these are a lot better value often than what is offered by most plans. The only issue is you may use a bit more battery as you have to use WiFi and you have to carry another device with you. I am currently using an Optus 3g prepaid option and when I got it about 6 months ago and for about $150 I got the device and 22Gb of data that lasts up to 2 years. True 22GB is not a huge amount… Read more »
I don’t know how economical your plan is for the average person. However, as you pointed out battery life being a concern, I thought I might add that those data-only SIMs work just fine in a regular Android phone. So if you’re particularly battery conscious, you could carry a two mobile phones and use bluetooth tethering from a cheap (or better yet old) Android phone with the data SIM, rather than Wi-Fi from a pocket modem.
Battery consumption when connected via WiFi is lesser compared to mobile data though, so this method might allow you to hunt for pokemon for a little bit longer. The screen is still one of the biggest power consumers, so the improvement might not be that significant.
If I were the telcos, I’d be cashing in on the Pokemon Go hype with special deals.
I use an app called myUsage to monitor data. It supports lots, maybe all, telcos and MVNOs.
Its Abandoned. Parts are no longer working unfortunately 🙁