How Much Mobile Data Does Smart24 Use?

It depends on which features you use, how actively you use them, and for how long. It can be anywhere between fractions of a MB (megabyte) per day when only using features like messaging or check in, or several MB per day when using features like Tracking and Emergency.

This article aims to give detailed advice about which features use the most mobile data so that you can plan ahead for the amount of mobile data you might need, for instance when 'roaming'.

Home Screen

Each time you open the Home Screen, Smart24 performs a 'handshake' with the Grid which needs around 5KB = 0.005MB of data.

Tracking and Emergency

Both the Tracking and Emergency features, when activated, make use of real time location sharing with the Grid, and each location update requires a 5KB handshake with the Grid. This means that the total data consumption by these features depends on the update interval and how long these features are actively used, which can add up over time.

The table above gives some approximate data usage for various update intervals and durations.

Map

Each map view needs data in order to download the information that is displayed. A map view occurs each time you look at a new area of the map.

• Using the 'vector' maps (Streets and Light) requires approximately 0.1MB per map view.
• Using the 'raster' maps (Satellite and Satellite Streets) requires approximately 4MB per map view.

So in most cases you'll want to use the vector maps and only use the satellite imagery only when buildings and roads have not been traced out.

One tip here is that Smart24 'caches' (stores for offline reuse) up to 50MB of map data. So if you know which regions of the map you need during a journey, you can download the relevant maps over wifi in advance of your trip.

Measuring your mobile data consumption

On iPhones you can measure the amount of mobile data used by each app on your phone. This information is available in the Settings app, under Mobile Data. Scrolling down to the bottom of this part of Settings, you can 'Reset Statistics', which might do just before performing any tests or measurements.