Norton Mobile Utilities Public Beta

[PBear]

I've been using NMU on my smartphone practically since the beta was released and my talk minutes usage has never been reported accurately (it is always significantly under-calculated).  I've been waiting patiently, through several NMU updates, for this to be fixed but -- if anything -- it is less accurate than ever.  Since I have unlimited data use and unlimited text messaging, I really haven't paid any attention to NMU's accuracy on those statistics.

Right now, NMU reports that I have used 222 of my monthly 300 talk minutes.  Checking on my carrier's web site just now, I see that my usage is actually 248 minutes -- NMU under-reporting my usage by 26 minutes -- and it is always some similar discrepancy.

This makes NMU practically useless for keeping track of, and not going over, my monthly talk allowance (at only 300 minutes per month, this is something of which I have to be constantly vigilant!).

My plan charges me one minute of usage for every minute of talk -- or any slightest fraction of a minute thereof -- for both outgoing and incoming calls.  My phone is an LG Optimus V.

Is there some way NMU will be working to improve the accuracy of this reporting?  

[erik_carlstrom]

I apologize for the inconvenience that this may be causing you.  I haven't heard anyone report an under calculation of phone minutes before. Could you provide us a few more details to see what we can do for you?

What is your Carrier?  

What options do you have set up within NMU?  (Billing start date, free minutes, etc).

Do you know if your carrier rounds to the nearest minute or second?  

Also, do you know the version of Android on your device?  You can find this by going to Settings > About Phone.  

[PBear]

Thanks for the reply.

My carrier is Virgin Mobile.  I assume by "rounding" you're asking whether they charge by fractions of minutes or whole minutes. They charge by whole minutes (any talk time used is charged by whole minutes, with any fraction of a minute used rounded up to the next whole minute).

Like I said, I have an LG Optimus V phone.  It uses Android version 2.2.1.

My Norton settings include:

Billing Start Day: 19

Total Monthly Minutes: 300

Roaming Alert: On

Free Incoming Calls: Off

I think that answers all your questions.  I hope you can find some answers.

Thanks again.

[erik_carlstrom]

Apologies as I missed your response for some reason.  

Do you have a print out of a monthly statement that we could review (blacking out the phone numbers of course)?  Please don't post here, but it would help to know how many of the calls were rounded and what that total would have been if it weren't rounded.  

My suspicion is that we're under counting because of the rounding error.  Depending on how many calls it would be pretty easy for the unaccounted for rounding to be around the 26 minutes you've noticed.  

[PBear]

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean.  A printout of my bill from Virgin Mobile?  Don't see how that will do you any good, as there's no way to tell from their billing which calls were rounded and which weren't.   They print only hours and minutes for the calls recorded; there is no disclosure at all of seconds consumed during calls.

I've included a small snippet of the bill, so you can see what I mean (you said don't post it here, but you didn't offer me any alternative -- and there's nothing sensitive in the data I've snipped out, just call durations and always-identical airtime used.

Let me know if there was something else you wanted me to provide.

Thanks.

[erik_carlstrom]

Apologies, If it doesn't include seconds then it'll be difficult to check into that.  Do you know if your carrier would be willing to send a more detailed summary of the calls?  

[PBear]

Well, I think it's highly unlikely that Virgin Mobile would be willing to send me out an individually itemized bill showing my partial minute usage -- if that's something its computer doesn't generate for the bills they post for us.  

Wouldn't it make more sense just to add an option to the settings in NMU to tell NMU to treat all call minutes as whole minutes, rounding them up instead of rounding them off?  It seems unlikely that Virgin Mobile is the only carrier out there that does it this way and that other NMU users would benefit from being able to adjust that setting.

Thanks again.

- jt

[Andmike]

Hi Erik and PBear.

It would be my guess from looking at this sample bill that the error would be around 9 minutes.  

There are 18 charged calls and with rounding starting at 1 second and going on to 59, the average on a large number would be around 30 seconds a call.  Therefore with 18 calls an error of 9 minutes (on average).  Is that more or less what you are seeing PBear?

[PBear]

That sounds just about right, Andmike.

Thanks.

[erik_carlstrom]

Thanks PBear (and thank you AndMike ).  We'll definitely look into this in a future update, but I can't comment as to when we will get this in.  Thank you for testing NMU and thank you for reporting this problem.