When I’m on the go, I am constantly using apps on my smartphone. Whether I’m using Google Maps to figure out where I’m going, Pandora to make the metro ride more pleasant or Shazaam to figure out which song is playing at happy hour – I often wonder how much of my data plan these apps are using when I can’t be on wi-fi.
Our parent company, CTIA – The Wireless Association®, has created a new website that attempts to answer that question for wireless consumers. KnowMyApp.org was recently launched to help educate consumers on their data usage. The goal of the site is also to give app developers info on how to create apps that use data more efficiently, which ultimately will make the app more appealing to consumers.
This site currently lists info on the 50 most popular apps available in the Apple® and Google™ stores, but the goal is for more apps to be tested and added each month.
When you go to the site, you can search by the app name, operating system or category. The info you can expect to find there is:
- How the app was tested;
- How much data is used when downloaded, at initialization (both first and subsequent start-ups to analyze caching), during active run time and during background time;
- How the app impacts data plans (i.e., 300 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB); and
- How you can conserve data usage.
Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments!
Please help spread the word: