Mav seems to use significant cell phone data; how to reduce?

[Glen Baker LLC]

No throttling on my Verizon plan.

Two IPhone 16 pro’s, monthly payment included in my bill.
Plus an Apple Watch my wife loves.
And the two free IPad elevens we got with the package. They add $10 a month each.

$254 a month.
Again no throttling back, ever.

$254 a month.

I'll stay on T-Mobile 5GB of 5G for $15 a month and buy my own phone.

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[Carlitos_92]

I need to enable Bluetooth on my IPhone SE in order to connect CarPlay to my Maverick.

You need to do that to connect wirelessly, because CarPlay starts its connection with a Bluetooth handshake and then switches to an ad hoc Wi-Fi connection directly to the Ford head unit.

You don't need Bluetooth or Wi-Fi if you are connecting via a USB cable. It's mostly irrelevant because neither of those wireless protocols are using up cellular data themselves, anyway.

 

[HeyBales]

I'm going to do a more in-depth investigation, looking at cumulative data on my phone before and after my next 500 mile drive up to Oregon. I'll do nothing, and use that as a baseline.

I haven't learned much on this thread via people's contradicting observations, but I'll try turning off the Ford Pass app and see what that does. I never use the thing, anyway.

I use a bluetooth wireless connector in the USB port, I'll disable that and use an actual cord and compare results.

I also know you can disable the vehicle wifi by pulling fuse #13 or something on the rear fuseblock; so add that to the testing.

There is a possibility that this data usage has zero to do with the Mav, and is some other thing turned on in my phone that I am unaware of.

You should look at the stats on that Ford app right now.
On my Android - I have to go into each connection type - Mobile network or Wi-Fi.
Find the app in question on each one.
See what it's data usage is.
It doesn't really do much - unless you are constantly opening it, and looking at location of truck which is stale data from when it was parked last. Or searching for dealers in it, maybe the manual if not actually downloading it. Still not much.

The modem disconnect for the truck isn't going to do anything positive for cell data - because if you actually were connecting with your phone to the truck and the phone was now using the truck cell data - your phone would not be using it's cell data.

That would actually cause an increase to your phone cell use when disconnected.
But do you have the Ford connectivity plan for that even to work?
Comes free for a year on newer models. 24MY it did not, maybe 30 days?
But you have to connect via WiFi to the truck's hotspot with your cell phone - like connecting in house to wifi.

Also - you should look at the Mobile data usage now before trip (not cummulative) - Android sorts in order of most to least for each app - very easy to see what's using the most cell data.
Take a picture of that screen before/after trip.

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