Track Your iPhone's Data Usage The Easy Way

This post is for those with a limited data plan for their iPhones. Telcos often charge a fair bit when you exceed your specified data limit, and if you're anything like me, you'd have definitely exceeded your quota at least once.

Well when I exceeded mine, I had no choice but to pay the charges, and after that I went on a search for the best way to track my data. At the time of my search, which is around a year ago, there was no worthy data tracking app except Data Usage.

My problem with Data Usage is every time you reboot your phone, you have to start up the app again otherwise it does not track your usage. Well, most people would accept that as a small price to pay, but not me!

Well, the commonsense approach would be to go into Settings and reset your data counters every month, but you know, that seems like too much work compared to searching and trying all possible solutions for a better one.

With iOS 5, Apple introduced Notification Center (you know, that grey piece of cloth you pull down from your statusbar). WeeTrackData is a jailbreak tweak by Albert Schulz that takes advantage of that, and it essentially tells you how much of your monthy data quota you've used so far. A swipe to the left gives you your usage for the week, and another swipe gives you your usage for the day. Simple, minimalistic, and it gets the job done.

Open up your Cydia app and search for it, give it a shot.

This App Pays You For Meeting Your Friends!

Phewtick recently became the app everyone knew about among my group of friends. But this is not an app like any other. This app pays you money, real money. Here's how it works.

When you meet your friends, just open up the app and scan each other's QR code. Once done, Phewtick randomly gives you five different amount of points, the largest over 100, 000 points, and the smallest is just a measly 3 points. Naturally, expect the probability of striking a large amount of points to be much lower than smaller amounts.

Under the Points tab, you can check how much your collected points are worth in your local currency, and once you collected a certain amount of points, Phewtick allows you to either cash it out to your PayPal account, or to donate it to charity.

They charge a commision of 15% though, so don't freak out when the amount you cashed out is not equal to what's shown in the app. Don't complain though, it's free money anyway.

I find Phewtick fun, not just for the money. It's actually more because it brings people together and serves as a good ice-breaking topic for not-so-close friends.

Naturally, there's concerns that it could be a hoax. I did some poking around and this company seems legit. I have friends who since then have cashed out their money as well, so no worries. 

So how can a company pay you to use their app? Simple. Advertisements. Advertisers pay Phewtick to display ads in the app. Some of the money raised through advertisements are channeled out back to the users, and the remaining obviously to fund the company.

This app requires an internet connection as well as Location Services / GPS to be turned on, so if it's sucking up your battery life, just turn off the Location Services / GPS once you're done using it.

So go ahead and download it from your AppStore or PlayStore. It's free anyway, go give it a spin.