There is now a talk about the Android mobile phones that are capable of using the 5G data networks. These mobile phones are being called “future ready” or “future safe”. But until the 5G data networks become common place, we all have to depend on 3G or 4G LTE networks. And of course, if you are near a big city then you can always get the free WiFi access points somewhere.
If you are using the 3G/4G data then you have to be really careful because after your data pack expires, the mobile networks start charging you with exorbitant fees. And only in a few minutes/hours you are slapped with a huge bill of hundreds of dollars. Some good behaving mobile service providers send you message that your data pack has expired, but for the rest of them you can use the free 3G Watchdog app in Android.
What 3G Watchdog does is that it monitors and meters the amount of data being used over mobile data networks, over WiFi and other routes. When daily or monthly data usage limit is reached, it warns you to turn off the mobile data connection. And despite its name, it is not limited to 3G networks only – it is able to monitor 4G LTE networks as well.
The app has a huge number of options and settings to be configured. But at the very basic level, you have to define you plan (how many GB of data for how many days) and when to give you a warning (default value is when 75% of the data usage limit is reached).
Once this is done, it will display a notification icon all the time indicating how much data has been used. This icon will change the color as the data usage limit is approached. It stays green when only a few megabytes have been used, changed to orange when almost half of the data has been used up and finally switches to the red color when data has been completely used.
You can download and install the 3G Watchdog from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.rgruet.android.g3watchdog&hl=en.