How much data does smartphone gps use

How Much Data Do Connected Apps Use While on the Road?

July 20, 2012 – posted in Apps , On the Road ,

With a data cap on most smartphone plans these days, many keep a close eye on their monthly data usage. Yet, there are more and more connected apps that we use on a daily basis. It’s been shown before that watching high res video on a smartphone or tablet, for example, can burn through your data limit in a few hours.

In order to avoid paying for an extra data plan for your car, many use their smartphone for several functions while driving, but through how much data do you burn on a regular communte and what does this accumulate to over a month? WIRED Autopia contributer Doug Newcomb  recently went on a test drive  to find answers. He found that for an average communte of 30 mintes each way, you’d end up using about 270 MB of data per month for off-board navigation and music streaming alone.

So how exactly can you reduce your data usage on the road? One option is to use an onboard navigation app, such as Garmin StreetPilot Onboard  or NAVIGON. which saves the map on your phone, so you don’t have to download map data each time you calculate a route. The NAVIGON app even allows you to download maps by state, so it will use very little of your phone’s internal memory (depending on how many maps you download, of course). Or, you can always get a nüvi navigation device  and avoid using your phone for navigation altogether.

You can read the full blog post, and see others at the Garmin blog site.