Download Meter – Reduce Spending on Mobile Internet

The 3G and 4G have already entered the mobile phone industry, and looking at its growing popularity among the user group, the web activities seem to get transferred partially or wholly to mobile networks soon in the near future. Accordingly, the network companies have also proposed new data plans for their users to help them use the technology to its fullest. So, buffering of high quality videos and social networking sites is a must on these devices, which require a large amount of data transfer. But in between, the users find it difficult to keep a track on their usage to minimize it, at least below their usage limit. So, there needs to be some helping hand for the problem.

Download Meter, developed by Hedonic Soft, is a data monitoring tool, for iphone and ipad. The app monitors your data usage and alerts you at regular intervals, depending upon the percentage use being done already, to help you not exceed your data limit. When installed, the app requires you to enter the data limit and the first day of billing and it’s done. After that, the application keeps running on the background and you can view the percentage tab to check your usage anytime you want. So, basically it rechecks your usage every 10 minutes and warns you after regular intervals i.e. when 60% or 70% of allowed data have been used, which is the sole purpose of this app. It turns yellow when you’re within 80% of your limit and turns red, when it is more than 90%.

The app helps you to keep track of the data trafficking of different applications being used by creation of counters. You can simultaneously track two or more applications or stop the rest, to determine the amount of usage by a particular application within a specified time limit. There are many other useful features like “since previous run”, which gives you the details of your data usage since last time you used web applications. Also, you can choose the monitoring period as day, week or month. The history tab gives you access to all your usage history for any time period or day, you want to just check for. Also, you can store that data in an excel file for further detailed analysis, which is pretty rare to find.

The app is very user friendly and does not contribute to the data usage when it runs as was expected for it to detect the usage by tracking your carrier. Instead, it gets usage directly from the device. So, it does not require any internet connection, can work with any carrier and is free to use, even when you are in roaming. It automatically calculates the usage for the present day and presents the data tabulated in terms of incoming, outgoing, Wi-Fi traffic and mobile Internet traffic. However, the user interface is a little bit complex and it becomes difficult to enter the required details, when you first start the app after reboot. However, a brief tutorial in the start sorts out the problem.

The app has been rated among 10 Top Paid Utilities in 54 countries and is very successful till date. It costs $1.99 on App store and is duly justified with the savings it provides to your pocket. As it does not require any internet connection for itself, it is really helpful and easy to use, once set up is done. But there should have been a trial or free version up to limited use, to check for its utility and limitations for the customers.