With Google’s latest mobile operating system Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Data Usage monitoring has been added. By setting up alerts and limits that trigger before the monthly data cap is reached, users can avoid expensive overage feeds.
Carriers have gone away from the unlimited, all-you-can-eat type of data plans. Android 4.0 / ICS has introduced a new feature that lets you directly monitor your data usage from the phone and setup a warning when your getting close to your allocated bandwidth cap. You can even disable data when you reach your data limit to prevent getting charged expensive fees.
To correctly alert you will need to be sure the data cycle dates on your phone correlate correctly with the data cycle dates of your carrier.
1. On your Android 4.0 phone, go to Settings and then Data Usage.
2. The Data Usage screen will show your current data and usage cycle.
3. You can change the data usage cycle by tapping on the date range and then choose Change cycle.
4. Choose the day of the month that your data usage cycle resets and hit Ok. You will need to get this data from your carrier. Typically it can be found on your bill.
5. Back on the Data Usage screen, tap the Set mobile data limit. You will get a note about data services being disabled on the phone once the limit is hit.
6. Finally, setup the limits and warning threshold by tapping and dragging on the red and orange bars. Once you are set, just exit the screen.
Another example of setting the ICS data limits has been provided previously.
