Complete novice here so forgive what might be a silly question or something that doesn't even make sense.

My son is on holiday in Malta with his girlfriend. He has a payg mobile on Orange/EE. He uses a Samsung S3 mini.

Anyway he purchased 10mb of data for Western European use so he could access the internet if there wasn't wi-fi readily available.

It seems like his phone has been running something in the background because he has "ap-prepaidsessio" on his usage history. Seems to be every hour or so - although since he's turned off his data roaming that seems to have stopped. I will need to check is usage history again in about an hour to make sure BUT he has asked me how much data he has used from the 10mb. This means nothing to me.

According to his history he has used in total 9622kb since the purchase was applied to his phone. This has all been free but I don't know how to convert to let him know what he's got left.

Can anybody help?

Basically it depends on the definition of MB that the phone company uses which could be 1000kB or 1024kB. But either way 9622kB is over 90% of his allocation!

Basically he's got less than half a megabyte left.

I assume you mean MB as mb is a very different thing altogether

"10mb of data" ??
that would last about half an hour at best (even in the UK).

Which is why he's already started being charged again already for two sessions today : 10.24 and 11.25!!!.

This is what he purchased:-
27/06/13 21:07
10MB web Z1&2 for a mth 5UKP

He has definitely switched off his data roaming now but as I'm no expert I've told him to switch the phone off and only turn it on when he needs to use it.

Am I right if he has switched off his data roaming he will only be able to connect via wi-fi?

there may be a separate "mobile data" toggle that would need to be switched off - that would ensure the phone use no mobile data at all.

Thank you. Just sent a text to tell him so hopefully when I check his account a bit later there will be no more charges coming out.

As chenks says there is almost certainly a Mobile Data setting that needs to be turned off as well. And unless he has completely powered off the phone the phone could still be using data in the background.

Just putting the phone into standby is not enough as any apps that he has which do updates in the background will still run.

For future reference it might be handy to install a data monitoring app on the phone to see what is consuming data and how much. I have this

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...roid.mdm&hl=en

on my phone. Quite interesting to see just what is going on in the background.

Thats brilliant - thank you. I might put that app on my phone even tho I'm not payg. It will be interesting to see what is going on.

Even on contract you may have a data allowance limit. And it can be quite expensive going over that limit in some cases.

For example I have a 3 mobile broadband dongle with a 15GB per month limit. It costs 10p per megabyte if I go over that. Doesn't sound much but if I downloaded double the limit it would cost me £1500

There may well be similar charges on your mobile contract, so always handy to know where you stand. That app can be programmed with your download limit and will show you how much you've got left and can also alert when you get close.

I don't really understand this thread. I thought the whole point of PAYG is that you PAY AS YOU GO i.e. you can't have unexpected nasty charges. Am I missing something ?