New *cheap* GPRS traffic monitor

[Guest chucky.egg]

Just saw this on Handango:

The Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter v1.2 by Efficasoft, allows you to monitor GPRS data usage both graphically and numerically on your smartphone, thereby giving you more control on your mobile phone bill.

Written in native C code, the Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter is less than 50KB in size and is especially designed to consume minimum system resources.

For only $5.95 it ought to be worth a look for anyone who doesn't already have SPB or All Locations apps.

http://www.efficasoft.com (links straight to the Handango listing)

[Guest Dumdidum]

This does not work on any Orange-phone! It is using privileged APIs, also decertifying the phone is not enough...

[Guest venomgames]

This does not work on any Orange-phone! It is using privileged APIs, also decertifying the phone is not enough...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How come it says Orange GPRS on the screenshot?

perhaps just not C500?

[Guest Confucious]

This from the handago link - in big red letters!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Important Note - Please Read

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some Orange smartphones (and maybe some others) have restricted the access to GPRS statistics. If the Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter keeps asking you to setup monitor connection, or never responds to data traffic, it means that Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter cannot be used on your device. In this case, please restart your phone before uninstalling the application.

Note: even some "fully unlocked" Orange smartphones disallow connection monitoring.

We strongly suggest you try it before you buy it.

[Guest mark4130]

Is the restriction of the GPRS statistics set by Orange (or am I reading the small print wrong?) Thats a bit cheeky if its true seeing as they wont tell you until you get your bill how much GPRS you have had!! It could almost be viewed as a deliberate attempt to let people unknowingly go ovver their GPRS allowance and hit them with the big bills!

Mark

[Guest mrw1004]

How come it says Orange GPRS on the screenshot?

perhaps just not C500?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I tried the trial download on my c500 which is conected to Orange. It would not establish a GPRS connection with IE or a mail server. Someone then phoned me and the whole thing froze up :shock: . After a restart agin no web or e-mail access. I restarted and removed the program. Got a web connection and e-mail no problem.

Ive tried Sbp and All locations GPRS which didnt crash but also didnt log any GPRS traffic.

Not having a counter is a stange oversite, I came from a moto v500 even that had a GPRS data counter.

Has anyone got any of these apps to work on a Orange c500 connected to Orange.

all the best,

mw

[Guest Phil Lee]

All-Locations logs the GPRS traffic on my Orange C500. You have to make sure you set your current connection to Orange GPRS in the program.

Edited March 10, 2005 by Phil Lee

[Guest Confucious]

I have not yet had a cjhance to try this as I haven't made it home since this was posted :oops:

But All locations trial worked on my C500 and as for Orange not telling you your GPRS usage someone in another thread (which I can't find) sugested we all email Orange and ask if they can put it on the website where you look for your remaining voiice minutes. I did and this is there treply:

Thank you for your mail.

Work is currently under way to introduce the facility you have requested. Orange

is committed to its customers, and will be delivering this service in the near

future.

Thank you for taking the time to write to us with your views on the service we

provide.  It is through feedback such as yours that we are able to assess the

effectiveness of our service.

Kind regards

Sue

Orange Customer Services

So good news there.

I am going home tonight and if I get time I will diwnload and try this on my C500.

[Guest mrw1004]

All-Locations logs the GPRS traffic on my Orange C500. You have to make sure you set your current connection to Orange GPRS in the program.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the reply, I have re-installed All-locations and had another play, as you suggest I had not seen the option to switch on the GPRS monitor and select Orange GPRS now I have done that it seems to be working fine.

Thanks for the tip.

all the best,

mw

[Guest mark4130]

I cant ever seem to get the download for all locations working.. it just keeps coming up with a message saying "dowload failed, try again?"

Damn.

Mark

[Guest chucky.egg]

Works fine here.

Where are you going? http://www.all-locations.com, then download the trial version

BTW - What are those "robot" things in your avatar?

Edited March 11, 2005 by chucky.egg

[Guest mark4130]

Yep, thats where I go. It downloads the trial version

screen shot

but only gets this far!!

The robots in my avatar are SAFS (SF3D or Maschinen Krieger). Its a japanese 3rd world war thing, aussies vs germans etc.

Mark

[Guest Efficasoft]

The Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter now works on Orange SPV C500!!!

We have released the first v2.0 for beta testing. It has a completely rewritten core connection monitoring module.

We have tested the program on four Orange SPV C500 of different OS versions, all of them are working perfectly well.

A new feature has also been added to display the connection's IP address.

Please fellow the link below for download

http://www.modaco.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=202915&st=0

Edited March 17, 2005 by Efficasoft

[Guest kaneso]

i used 13mb last night from listening to 20k radio for about an hour and agile messenger and browsing..

thank god i got free gprs till april 31st

[Guest Rado]

The Smartphone GPRS Traffic Counter now works on Orange SPV C500!!!

We have released the first v2.0 for beta testing. It has a completely rewritten core connection monitoring module.

Hi there,

I'm a newbie and I have just purchased SPV C500 this week from Orange Slovakia, and was a little disappointed by some details coming from SE T610.

Anyway, I have downloaded the trial version of Efficasoft GPRS traffic counter today to try it out, installed without a problem, tried to view 4 wap pages in IE, switched back to GPRS counter only to see that my GPRS traffic jumped from 0 to 78.6 MB. I somehow don't believe this number. :D

BTW in the options one has to select a connection to monitor. Isn't it possible to monitor 2 or more connections? Doesn't one of the other GPRS traffic counters support this?

Thanks,

Rado

[Guest dez16v]

I have just downloaded version 2.0 from the links after I found that the earlier version did not work on my spv c500. The new version works fine for me. This is a great little application that makes you aware of how much gprs you are using.

I had a bit of a shock two months ago when i got my bill from Orange.

My contract had gone over the twelve month period and I had not upgraded my mpx200 because I was holding out for the mpx220, however I gave up waiting after reading great reviews about the spv c500 so I upgraded after 13 months instead of twelve.

But as I said when I got my bill it showed that i had been charged £15.76 for my gprs usage. I knew that I had the £4 for 4mb bundle added to my account so I rang customer services to ask why it was so much for the gprs. They looked into it and said that I had not renewed my £4 for 4mb bundle after the twelve month contract and that was why it was so high. Then they did admit that the gprs had been calculated incorrectly for what I had used anyway, so I got a refund of £5.11 for the incorrect amount.

So if you are about to go over your twelve month contract without upgrading, make sure that you check your account is up to date.

Cheers !!

dez16v :D

[Guest Rado]

I have just downloaded version 2.0 from the links after I found that the earlier version did not work on my spv c500. The new version works fine for me.

I've got version 2.0 as well (didn't try the original version), but the number can't be real - if it was then my GPRS connection would have to be about 2.6Mbit/s. :D Or, eventually, it could have gathered this data from some internal counters in the phone? I'm sure I didn't use 70+ megabytes since I have the phone, at least according to the Orange call and data reports which are update daily.

So if you are about to go over your twelve month contract without upgrading, make sure that you check your account is up to date.

We've got a slightly different contracts here in Slovakia I'm sure :D You can upgrade your phone here after 24 months (or 18 if you're also using Orange World). My contract includes 10MB GPRS data but I rarely go over this.

Rado

[Guest Efficasoft]

I've got version 2.0 as well (didn't try the original version), but the number can't be real - if it was then my GPRS connection would have to be about 2.6Mbit/s. :D Or, eventually, it could have gathered this data from some internal counters in the phone? I'm sure I didn't use 70+ megabytes since I have the phone, at least according to the Orange call and data reports which are update daily.

We've got a slightly different contracts here in Slovakia I'm sure :D You can upgrade your phone here after 24 months (or 18 if you're also using Orange World). My contract includes 10MB GPRS data but I rarely go over this.

Rado

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hello Rado, thanks for your feedback!

We found out that this is due to a small bug in the program. It rarely occurs, but can cause incorrect traffic record.

It has now been fixed, please try the latest release!

http://www.modaco.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=202915&st=0

Thanks again!

Efficasoft

Edited March 14, 2005 by Efficasoft

[Guest Rado]

Hello Rado, thanks for your feedback!

We found out that this is due to a small bug in the program. It rarely occurs, but can cause incorrect traffic record.

It has now been fixed, please try the latest release!

http://www.modaco.com/index.php?act=ST&f=3&t=202915&st=0

Thanks again!

Efficasoft

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi there,

Now it seems it's working fine, thanks! The only problem I had with the upgrade was that I first uninstalled the program, and then reinstalled to the new version and it remembered the old incorrect traffic, so I erased the file Program Files\SPGTC\gtclog.dat, and then it started to show the "trial expired" warning message.

After uninstalling and reinstalling again, it was showing a strange letter in the "next billing date" field - this one: ¬ (character code 172). This was fixed after opening options and clicking done soft button (it remembered the date from the previous version - where is this information stored?).

Most importantly, it now shows a correct traffic - about 24kbytes after viewing 2 wap pages.

Thanks,

Rado

PS: It still shows V2.0 in the about box.

[Guest Efficasoft]

Hi there,

Now it seems it's working fine, thanks! The only problem I had with the upgrade was that I first uninstalled the program, and then reinstalled to the new version and it remembered the old incorrect traffic, so I erased the file Program Files\SPGTC\gtclog.dat, and then it started to show the "trial expired" warning message.

After uninstalling and reinstalling again, it was showing a strange letter in the "next billing date" field - this one: ¬ (character code 172). This was fixed after opening options and clicking done soft button (it remembered the date from the previous version - where is this information stored?).

Most importantly, it now shows a correct traffic - about 24kbytes after viewing 2 wap pages.

Thanks,

Rado

PS: It still shows V2.0 in the about box.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Rado,

It seems that your uninstallation was not successful.

In v2.0, the traffic data file is definitely deleted during uninstallation.

The program is designed to be "green", all the information are stored in the SPGTC folder. We do not write anything to the registry or anywhere else.

To reset the traffic record, simply select another connection or billing date in Options, press Done, and swtich it back.

Please double check your setup file, is it spgtc201setup.exe? Seems that you are still using v2.0 (as mention above, that bug occurs very rarely, otherwise the v2.0 works fine).

One thing to be mentioned is that, in v2.01, traffic information will no longer be deleted during uninstallation, this is due to the consideration of easier upgrading in the future. If you want to clean the program completely, simply delete the SPGTC folder after uninstallation, and everything is gone.

Please restart your phone, uninstall the program, download spgtc201setup.exe and try again!

Thanks very much for your feedback!

Efficasoft

[Guest Confucious]

I've just tried v2.0 and checked 2 email accounts and had no emails on either. I only used 3788.50MB !

I guess I'd better upgrade to 2.01 - isn't it nice when the fix is available before you discover the problem :D

Thanks.

[Guest Rado]

Please double check your setup file, is it spgtc201setup.exe? Seems that you are still using v2.0 (as mention above, that bug occurs very rarely, otherwise the v2.0 works fine).

I'm sure I ran the spgtc201setup.exe I still have it here on my harddrive as I downloaded it from handango yesterday, and the installer is the same file size as the v2.0 installer. When launched it says it will install v2.01 so I guess I really have got the most recent installer. :D Anyway, it's working now so I think I'll evaluate it for a while.

One thing to be mentioned is that, in v2.01, traffic information will no longer be deleted during uninstallation, this is due to the consideration of easier upgrading in the future. If you want to clean the program completely, simply delete the SPGTC folder after uninstallation, and everything is gone.

Thanks for the info! One more question - I'm new into smartphones so I don't know if this is feasible at all, but will it be possible to monitor more than one GPRS connections? I don't even need a separate reports for them, just the same report as the traffic counter offers right now, but showing a summary for 2 connections (Orange World and Orange Internet, for example). Do you plan something like this for future releases?

Thanks again,

Rado

[Guest Efficasoft]

Thanks for the info! One more question - I'm new into smartphones so I don't know if this is feasible at all, but will it be possible to monitor more than one GPRS connections? I don't even need a separate reports for them, just the same report as the traffic counter offers right now, but showing a summary for 2 connections (Orange World and Orange Internet, for example). Do you plan something like this for future releases?

Thanks again,

Rado

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks Rado! Yes, very soon, we will release the next version of 'Smartphone GPRS Data Counter', which allows you to monitor any number of connections.

Thanks again for your feedback!

Efficasoft

[email protected]

http://www.efficasoft.com

Edited March 21, 2005 by Efficasoft

[Guest youngricardo]

Having some problems with this.

First of all I definately have the trial version of v2.01 installed and I'm using it on my new orange c500. I've got it set to monitor the orange gprs traffic and have double checked in the phone settings that this is the connection used for the internet.

The problem is, the gprs tracker isn't doing anything! I've been browsing the net and downloading emails but still the usage is 0kb. I've also noticed that even when I'm in the middle of a browsing session and the phone is clearly connected, the gprs tracker shows the status as being disconnected!

Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else had the same problem?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that I'm using a payg orange sim that has free gprs use until the end of April?

Any help would be gratefully received!

edit: Also just noticed that the tracker screen isn't displaying the IP address for orange gprs.

Edited March 18, 2005 by youngricardo

[Guest Efficasoft]

Having some problems with this.

First of all I definately have the trial version of v2.01 installed and I'm using it on my new orange c500. I've got it set to monitor the orange gprs traffic and have double checked in the phone settings that this is the connection used for the internet.

The problem is, the gprs tracker isn't doing anything! I've been browsing the net and downloading emails but still the usage is 0kb. I've also noticed that even when I'm in the middle of a browsing session and the phone is clearly connected, the gprs tracker shows the status as being disconnected!

Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone else had the same problem?

Could it have anything to do with the fact that I'm using a payg orange sim that has free gprs use until the end of April?

Any help would be gratefully received!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No it doesn't matter what kind of sim you are using.

It appears that the 'GPRS Monitor' program is not running. Please try restart your phone, uninstall the program, install it again, and see what happens.

Thanks,

Efficasoft

Edited March 18, 2005 by Efficasoft