I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

I kid you not... last year around this same time, I was in Japan for vacation. I rented a SIM card from Softbank (one of the 3 only mobile carriers who still use SIM for some of their devices in Japan) and used it in my WinMo phone (HTC tytn II). Worked like a charm :) Unfortunately, it worked too well...

The only way one can use their own phone with a Japanese SIM card is that the phone has to be able to pick up a UMTS 2100 band... oh and it has to be unlocked of course. This means that you are using a data connection to place/receive calls, send texts/mmss or just about anything else. So thinking I was smart, I turned off anything that automatically connected to the internet (weather app, push email, RSS feed app, etc...). When I finished my trip and made my way back to the states, needless to say I was shocked to find an e-mailed phone bill from Softbank stating that I owed them ¥99,063(roughly $1000.00). Upon further investigation, I found out that there was a leak (perhaps an app I forgot to disable) and data rampantly ran free from my device the whole trip...

For WinMo this problem would have been solved by downloading a data tracker and this awesome app I found later after that trip. The app was called Nodata and it mainly functioned as an extremely easy on/off switch pertaining to data connections.

Now I have the N900 and I'm leaving for Japan in a couple weeks. I have a data tracker but now I'm looking for a data kill program such as the Nodata app I mentioned above. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated :)

Thank you for your time,
John J

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

Go to Settings, Internet Connections and set connect Automatically to Never. If it's already connected to their connections disconnect and it won't reconnect.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

simply reboot your device once a day will save you from unnecessary data usage or leak :)

N900 wireless is very good and safe. So I guess you are safe.

open xterminal: and type

root [enter]
reboot [enter]

this will do automatically reboot which do a clean start up.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

@ohwut: Ok I'll try that before going to sleep and check to see if data got free when I awake. I did the second part of your message last night thinking that would do it but when I woke up, I found that it had connected once again. Thanks for your help :)

@maxximum... I think you're reffering to memory leakage and I'm doing alright in that department. Thanks though.

John J

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

wow thats what I was worried about with softbank as well. this happend to a friend of mine using his N95, but he was using data on purpose. under the impression that the unlimited plan was applicable to his phone. I was there today and I was thinking of getting a 3GS (because its free) and then throwing the SIM in my 900. sucks I cant use data with the phone though.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

Make sure you remove the rss reader widget from your desktop - It's known to not respect whether the connection you're using is wifi or data as per bug 8002, although the fix is on the way.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

You may also install Tablet Mode Tools package. It adds additional "Tablet mode" button to the power switch menu. Pressing this switches the device to "tablet mode" where the GSM module is disabled. You cannot place calls and transfer data. Only WiFi and BT are allowed.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

Install Personal Dataplan widget on your n900. Very useful keeping track of 3G data usage.

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

Sounds great but where can I find the app? I searched the repositories and found nothing. Thanks.

John J

Re: I received a phone bill for ¥99,063(roughly $1000)!!!
 

It's called "Cellular Modem Control Buttons" (sorry), and you will find it in extras-devel.