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Comment by holidaygoose | Hacker News Reader

I'm perplexed. I can see hating them for other reasons, but expensive would not be the word I associate with Google Fi. I pay $22 including taxes/fees per month, but it's probably not a good carrier for people who watch a lot of video on their phones.

* they're also probably one of the only honest carriers in terms of taxes/fees. My previous carrier had a much higher tax % which I thought was normal, but now I realize it was just a markup disguised as a tax, so they could continue to offer their "$40/month for everything" price point while actually charging $50/month.

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How are you managing such low data use? I easily burned through 1gb in my first week (partly due to my podcast app downloading 400mb -> me changing the settings -> it downloading 200mb the next day -> me finding the right setting to block it from using mobile data).

I've been keeping mobile data turned off unless I explicitly need to use it. I turned it on last night to google something quickly, and it managed to use 60mb.

Can't wait to go back to mintsim after I satisfy the 4 month requirement from their cyber Monday deal.

>How are you managing such low data use?

I have a 5GB plan and rarely use half of it in a month, even though I spend plenty of time using various mobile apps.

It's probably pretty simple: I don't do any streaming: music, podcasts, internet radio, etc.

If you really "need" to stream YouTube videos away from a WiFi hotspot, then you should just pay $150/month and stop complaining.

I'm not the parent commenter, but I usually use around 500 MB a month. Mostly, this means sticking to Hacker News+quick web searches (which should not take 60 MB!). Mail, weather, and some other built-in apps have background refresh enabled; everything else has cellular data disabled.

I'm equally astonished how people can use so much data :)

Like one of the other posters said, I don't stream on phone, and use the wifi at home and at work. I'd love to see the breakdown of data usage (reported by the phones) for heavy users. I wonder if it's like 4GB netflix, 200MB chrome, 100MB Tinder, 20MB Uber, 5MB email.

I used ~20mb last month. heremaps with offline - faster, less battery. carbonOS rom on my pixel w/ no trace of google anything. read news type sites only on the toilet or in bathtub, so that's on wifi. when I'm out and on the subway or whatever, I'm playing a korean learning game on my phone. don't have any social network stuff. That 20mb was mostly email headers, set to only fully download on wifi and I only opened a couple of those emails.

googling something does not take 60mb. as soon as you turned on data, a whole bunch of google's android crap and other apps started phoning home and sending the data they've been collecting on your phone at the expense of your battery life.

agreed, it is so much cheaper than verizon for multiple phones on a plan. we don't use a lot of data, but its very predictable and cheap pricing if we are traveling and are using it. I've not had to deal with support often, so my experience has been positive.

My single gripe about Project/Google Fi is that sometimes I'm forced to use a 3rd party app (FiSwitch) for when it doesn't automatically switch to the best carrier for that area, but even with that the cheaper price is enough for me to stay. I still hope they improve the carrier detection issue though.

If you use large amounts of mobile data, their plans very quickly become obnoxious (throttled after 15GB) and expensive ($80 plus taxes/fees).

Compare that with T-Mobile, who offers $70 a month (including taxes/fees) with throttling at 50GB and 20GB of hotspot data for $15/mo more, or even AT&T or Verizon, and it's more expensive for less service.

I'm not sure this is the use case for the majority of Fi users, if they are using a lot of data its going to be cheaper from one of the source carriers than Fi, there is no way Fi could be cheaper than T-Mobile or Sprint who are the Google Fi carriers for heavy data use like this.

Most of the time my phone is on wifi and only using data during travel why pay for anything Im not expecting to use. If I'm off wifi enough where I'm doing a lot of data I'm not using Fi.

> there is no way Fi could be cheaper than T-Mobile or Sprint who are the Google Fi carriers

Look at it as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination. A carrier can charge a lot to their locked-in customers, and sell spare capacity at lower markups to people who have competing alternatives, as long as all not everyone abandons them and moves to Fi.

I'm not sure how other people use so much data (besides video). I use whatever I want, and rarely go above 500MB ($5). I made sure to do the offline Google Maps (which I want anyways), and avoid streaming video on phone.

I use offline Google maps (I have ~10 areas since I travel frequently) but still use 600 MB/month of data from that app alone, I'm assuming traffic data.

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