Do you ever feel as though it’s challenging to find out which apps on your phone are using up all your data? While you know some standard apps and activities are bound to use data, such as video streaming and games, other parts of your phone that use data may surprise you.
If you’re using your phone’s camera to take photos, the amount of data used tends to be very low. However, your camera has other uses, including video chat, mobile scanners, and more that can use data.
Keep reading for more information on what you can use your camera for, along with all you need to know about what it means to use data and how you can monitor your data usage.
The Different Uses of Your Phone Camera
The camera on your phone has become a very convenient tool for various activities. Most of these activities don’t cause a massive dent in your data plan, and you rarely think about them when figuring out which apps use up your data storehouse. There are some instances where using the camera on your phone helps both your work and personal life.
Here are different reasons why your camera can be a valuable asset both in the office and home:
Work-Related Uses:
- Depositing Checks
- Scanning Important Documents
- Taking Photos of Products
- Sending/Receiving Photos Related to Damaged Materials
- Taking Screenshots as a Work History Log
- Scanning and Saving Business Cards
Home-Related Uses:
- Uploading and Downloading Photos to Storage
- Taking Selfies
- Contacting Relatives and Friends Through Video Chat
- Using Your Front-Facing Camera as a Mirror
- Using it as a Food Log
- Ordering Prescriptions
- Magnifying Objects
- Creating a File for Insurance Purposes
While you may not need your camera for every single use above, it does have the capabilities to help you with many different tasks. The table below shares some typical camera uses along with the average data used and storage requirements:
| Activity | Average Data Usage | Storage Requirements |
| Uploading/Downloading Photos (Around 500 photos) | Under 3 GB per month | Around 2.5 GB |
| Video Chats (20 hours) | 7 GB per month | Over 100 MB |
| Mobile Scanners | Under 50 MB per month | Under 100 MB |
| Timestamp Camera Apps | No data used | Under 50 MB |
| Taking Photos | Under 50 MB per month | Under 100 MB |
| Depositing Checks | Under 2 GB per month | Under 500 MB |
| Social Media (30 hours) | Under 100 MB per month | Under 1 GB |
Note: The conversions of kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and terabytes (TB) are:
- 1,000 KB = 1 MB
- 1,000 MB = 1 GB
- 1,000 GB = 1 TB
The common conversion you’ll see from smallest to greatest is kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes.
What Does it Mean to Use Data?
This is a digital age where data usage and carrying smartphones have become the norm. But what does it mean to use data? Even further, what is data?
Mobile data is what allows you to connect to the world around you. You can send and receive information through a wireless cellular network. You can send and receive various information, including text messages, phone calls, mobile games, and web browsing.
When you engage in the above activities, you’re both sending and receiving data.
Here’s a scenario:
- You want to show your friend in Alaska all the photos you took in Texas. So, you decide to send the photos via text message. You have now sent data (the Texas photo) through your networks radio frequencies to your friend.
- Your friend responds with photos of snowy Alaska. You’ve now received data (the Alaska photo) from your friend.
You are partaking in data exchange for each activity you engage in on your phone, from sending photos to scanning documents. Depending on your phone’s data limits, you may have access to very little data or an unlimited amount.
But guess what? Not all data counts against your data usage. By using Wireless Fidelity, better known as WiFi, you can avoid charges for your mobile data. WiFi helps send your data instead of using your mobile network when you’re near a specific WiFi router (at home, coffee shops, libraries, etc.).
How Can I Monitor Data Usage?
There are now several ways available to monitor your data usage:
From Your Phone
- After opening up your settings menu, you can find “Data Usage.”
- Each app will show how much data you use within a specific timeframe.
- You can also find out which apps use background data and apps that use data while not open.
Your Provider App
- Providers include services for you to monitor your data usage from their app.
- Verizon has a Data Hub in their My Verizon portal that breaks down your usage in several categories.
- AT&T uses AllAccess to show how much data you use along with pie charts detailing how you use data.
- To find out more about data usage tools, you can contact your provider.
Online Tools
- You can find both paid and free data tools available online.
- Free tools will allow you to manually input certain information, like how much time spent gaming, the number of photos you can upload, and the average amount of data used.
- PenTeleData includes a calculator that allows you to input how much time spent on the web, emailing, social networking, video and music streaming, and uploading and downloading photos. You can set the time to monthly or daily, get total data usage, and see broken-down data usage.
How Much Data Do I Need?
When deciding how much data you need, keep the following questions in mind:
- Will WiFi be available the majority of the time?
- How many people will be using the data?
- Will the data be used for personal or work-related activities?
- Will data activity be similar each month or fluctuate?
If you’re unsure how much data you will need, AT&T provides access to an Internet Data Calculator. The calculator lets you put in what you’ll be using your data for and estimates how much data will be beneficial.
Fierce Wireless reported that the average person uses up to 31.4 GB of data per month, which includes:
- 10 hours of streaming HD videos
- Uploading 45,000 photos to social media
- Sending around 45 million messages through WhatsApp
- Listening to 10 days’ worth of high-quality music on Spotify
- Looking at Snapchat Stories for over three consecutive weeks
Using data has become so much a part of everyday life that you rarely think about how much information you’re sending and receiving until you calculate it.
A large part of the increased data usage has to do with many people working from home and joining the remote work team during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though COVID-19 won’t last forever, it has increased our connectivity to the internet.
Conclusion
Though your phone’s camera typically doesn’t use any more than 50 MB each month, depending on how you use it can cause your data usage to go up or down.
Some common uses of your phone’s camera include:
- Taking Photos
- Mobile Scanner Apps
- Depositing Checks
- Video Chats
- Creating Videos on Social Media
- Uploading and Downloading Photos
You can find out more about how much data your camera uses by going to your phone’s settings and finding information on individual apps. You can also go to Connections, where you’ll see an overall summary of your data usage.