

My first three days with a data plan - akothari
http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=259

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hippo33
So, question: do you think that having a data plan makes you more or less
efficient? When I used to have a data plan, I found that I could stay up to
date with real-time information on the go. So, at first I thought it was a
productivity tool. But over time, I found that I spent more time checking
email, because I was checking it more frequently. Instead of just going to my
inbox once every couple of hours and cleaning everything in one-fell swoop
quickly, with a data plan, I would be checking my email all the time, and on a
mobile device it's a much slower process to clean up an inbox. I've since
gotten rid of my data plan, and honestly, given the inefficiencies of my
constant email/twitter/fb-checking, I don't think it's worth my time to go
back for the purpose of staying on top of things. That said, what I do miss is
the ability to effectively have a GPS on the go. Thoughts?

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jarek
It might be worth noting that unless you travel widely, you don't need a data
plan for GPS. Cache maps when on wifi then use your device's GPS/A-GPS/tower
triangulation functionality.

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dotBen
Caching maps is actually incredibly difficult. I just took a weekend trip to
Death Valley (no cell coverage) and wanted to do this on my Android Evo.

Google Maps doesn't cache more than a few tiles so it's totally useless. There
are a number of apps in the Market that will download maps locally - one
downloads Google Map tiles illegally (with mixed success) and the rest I
couldn't get to work.

Do you have any advice or experience you can share?

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skybrian
Look under "Cache Settings" in Maps. There's a checkbox for "Prefetch on
Mobile". If it's off and you're not using Maps while on Wi-Fi then I wouldn't
expect much caching to happen. You can also see how much data Maps has cached.

I don't have a data plan and I find caching works well on my Nexus One when I
ask for directions before leaving the house. I haven't tried it on a long road
trip though. For comparison, the cache size on my phone is 37M now.

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hippo33
Hmm...great idea! I hadn't thought of that to be honest.

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SkyMarshal
In my recent experience with my new Android phone, it's best to get an
unlimited plan for the first few weeks or months, when you're playing the most
with the App store, downloading and trying lots of apps.

But once that inevitably tapers off, and you find the few you use most often
and uninstall the rest, then you should check your data usage again to see if
your normal email/etc checking habits use less than the lower tier data plans
with quotas, and switch back to one of those if so.

