T-Mobile G1 Still Uses The Internet – Even When You Tell It Not To

by Chris Moor
tagged T-Mobile G1

One unfortunate Gizmodo reader has found out the hard way that apparently the G1′s internet access can’t be fully turned off.

During a recent trip to the UK, the unlucky T-Mobile G1 owner was hit with a $102.85 data roaming bill – even though he had turned off data roaming, data sync and 3G prior to his trip.

Upon returning home he contacted T-Mobile customer service and was informed by a supervisor that “the G1 always accesses the internet whether you are sending text messages or calls—even when the data roaming features are off. ”

As it turns out, he was charged approx $.15 every 3-7 minutes on average—but not all of it was from calls and texts. In his words, it was “almost as if the phone is pinging.”

If you’ve experienced any similar activity with your G1, let us know in the comments.

[via Gizmodo.com]

» See more articles by Chris Moor

Categorized as Android News

Comments

http://patrickdevivo.com/ Patrick DeVivo

Didn’t a similar thing happen when the iPhone first came out?
Steven King

This is very good to know. I travel to England on a yearly basis and always take my phone. They should come up with a feature to let us truly turn off the data usage.
robert barrett

As someone said at Tmonews is that you can get one of those tempory sim cards that are like prepaid air time cards and you just switch it with your TMobile sim card.
Rohan

Ah maybe i should leave it at home when I goto brussels at the weekend.
dean

i will be away in europe for one month starting december 15th i will be back january 12th. i will answer this question once and for all february 1rst! it is on my calander…
robert barrett

This is over 2 weeks old man. They are now making the G1 with the option to shut it off overseas. Stop showing old stuff man.
shalee

I had the same problem! I turned off data sync, wifi, and 3g. But G1 was constantly accessing internet. It really sucks!
John

Yep, me too. Even if you switch off data roaming, WiFi, using wireless info for maps, select to only use 2G, untick all the data sync boxes etc. etc., the thing STILL shows an active data connection under status…
http://www.systems4craps.com craps systems

Ya it really creates a problems most of the times
Fah-q

Bought this phone and this thing has been accessing the internet constantly. Im on AT&T so i unlocked it. Our phone bill should be $160 or so, last month it was almost $300, this month almost $500. We dont have a data plan, so it racked up charges big time. The downloads have been random, at one point there was a 21MB download which cost $210.

Sucks, guess ill have to get an att supported phone.
hydra

I had the same problem, I switch off every single data connections and at the same time, i also deleted my APN. However my bill reached RM700++ today and i dont know what is happening. I hope Google should come out with a fix where user able to turn off every data access completely.
zhangjunyi

I met same problem on G1.

I once pressed the YouTube application, and then quickly quit. continue do some other simple operations of menu, and put the phone there.

After less then one day, I found the phone is out of power, and found the G1 have spent me 100MB data streams. It’s sucks. I even don’t know where it gone.
Mateusz

Try APNDroid from Market. You don’t have to remove APN app changes it to invalid (to avoid data connection) and automaticly restore it when you want use APN.
Artimos

Thank you Mateusz..i think you give the answer
partyandbs

There needs to be some way to fix this because when you change the APN with APNDroid then you cant send and receive MMS. I am on ATT with no data plan
Nico

I bougth a G1, unlocked it that I can use it when I’m back in Switzerland (heading home in 3 weeks). I have it now 2 days and I’ve been charged over 40$ until now. I didn’t use the internet, mail, market at all yet… I think I have to turn it off until I return.
jo

Do your research and GET A DATA PLAN! T-mobile uk did me a data plan with flext35 for £35 a month
Vinny

The Data Plan is only good if you stay in the country. when you are in another country then you’re in trouble.

Anyway this does not fix the issues of data roaming overseas. I think T Mobile and Android folks should fix this. Let the user have control over data roaming and let them CHOOSE if they want data roaming enabled or not.

You cannot sell a phone that is made to be used overseas and then have the data connection ‘left’ on even when the user switched off data connection.

Effectively;
1) if you want to use the phone overseas without data connection then you CAN NOT… unless you want to pay costly overseas data roaming charges.
2) leave your phone switched off when overseas.

This is not good to force users into a corner and make money out of this situation. The phone is not fit for its purpose(when using the phone overseas). Trades Description Act (in the UK) comes to mind.
http://franceproperty.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/stunning-property-for-sale-lorgues-south-france-ref-2538-eur-836000/ Allen Carson

Bumped this to MyLinkVault (not sure what it is? well A free online bookmark manager. Other bookmark managers can be so clumsy to use
Yoseph

I have a T-mobile G1 and I tried hard to get it connected to internet to the ethiopian Telecommunication but failed. I followed all the procedures but still the status indicates diconnected. Any help???
http://www.lightbox.net.nz Tim Jacobsen

I have a simple solution for when you travel,

Find your APN settings and note them down, then change them to bogus info and your phone won’t be able to connect to the internet, I have done this on my Nexus One and confirmed it works.

You can test it in your home country first (also disable wifi while you are testing otherwise you may get tricked!). I haven’t traveled yet so can’t confirm it would work when overseas, I imagine the phone may request from the provider what the APN settings are automatically as I didn’t set them up they were just there on a brand new phone, if so you will have to change it when you get there…

All I did was put an ‘x’ in front of the APN type field then tried to send email, no go

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