SOTI Pulse Logo

Google Play Using Large Amounts of Data

DM
Devin McGlone
G&D Integrated Transportation, Inc.

Hello,

At my company we are upgrading to Samsung Tab Active 3s on Android 12 enrolled as Android Enterprise.  As of late, I've noticed a large amount of data consumption on these tablets.  The issue is that we are on a limited monthly plan (1Gb a month) delivered by a hotspot we connect to via wifi and I've already had four tablets deplete the data due to Google Play activity (so a month's worth in 6 days or less).

I have disabled updates to apps via Google Play via feature control, which appears to be effective.  I initially thought this was based on the updates being sent by Samsung to update the OS but I can see that the data consumed there is listed separately.  I contacted support and they suggested disabling background data, which has helped, but Google Play still used 276Mb just yesterday.  I'm unable to figure out what is causing the amount of data consumption and am not used to this behavior as the majority of my fleet is using older Tab A T-350s on Android 6.0.1. Is there a way to see what Google Play is doing that is causing the data usage to be so elevated?

If you have any ideas for me to try out or need more information to assist, please let me know. Perhaps this data consumption should be expected on newer devices and I should look into increasing the amount of data purchased per month, although I'd like to avoid that if possible.  Thanks!    

Wifi Data Usage Android 12 Google Play
3 years ago
SOTI MobiControl
ANSWERS
MD
Matt Dermody Diamond Contributor
3 years ago

Google Play could be updating any number of system apps and services in the background. Chrome and/ or the system WebView, Youtube, Google Maps, etc, are all system apps that Play will try to automatically upgrade in the background regardless of whether they are approved via Managed Play for install.  

RC
Raymond Chan Diamond Contributor
3 years ago

If your Samsung AE devices are supposed to be online to get connected  primarily to the Soti MobiControl server and possibly a few low-bandwidth corporate app server with known IP addresses/ports, then one possible solution worth studying is to use appropriate whitelist in firewall policy (should be freely available in Samsung Knox Service Plug-in OEMConfig compliant app downloaded from Managed Google Play store) to block all undesirable traffic.

RS
Rafael Schäfer
3 years ago

Check if you blacklisted an app which is also provided via playstore (enterprise or managed).

If this is the case, it will be downloaded, install will fail because of blacklisting and this will run into a independent loop. And because of this consume massive amount of data.

7
74HCT04
3 years ago

I've started to see alarmingly high data usage from Play Store of late, too. Youtube is blacklisted using the out-of-the box Application Run Control setting configuration's Youtube "switch" (see attached) because it used to provide video notifications despite not being whitelisted by my lockdowns. However, on an affected device, Youtube hasn't been updated by Play Store - it's version 14.49.51 (my personal Android 9 device - not enrolled in MobiControl - has version 17.39.34, which is up-to-date at the time of writing).

The affected devices are Honeywell CT60, running Android 9. I think Youtube is the version supplied with the factory firmware and maybe falls outside of the scope of  Play Store? It's not in Play Store's list of apps...

Once I know more, I will either update this thread or start my own (as applicable).

S
SAMOD@SOTI
3 years ago

Hello everyone, 

Thank you for your post.

As your issue involves high data usage, and seems to come from Google Play Store, we will need a bug report capturing at least 24 h logs while the devices are consuming high data, and for that you may to raise a ticket with Technical Support to further investigate your issue.

Thank you.

Technical Support | SOTI Inc. |1.905.624.9828 | support@soti.net | www.soti.net |

DM
Devin McGlone
2 years ago

Sorry for the long delay in getting back to this post.  I was able to contact SOTI support and we put a Managed Google Play Supression configuration in place.  This seems to have cut down on on the amount of Google Play updates eating up data.  Now to stop those pesky OS updates!  Thanks to all for your suggestions! 

Under Add a Configuration> Email & Others> Managed Google Play. set to Never Update.

LW
Lucas Wortmann
2 years ago

Hey, we have a similar problem with the high data usage from the playstore. The configuration with 'never upate' by managed google play is already in place but seems to have no effect or atleast the appupdates aren't our problems. Have you any other setting / rule in place to stop the playstore from downloading?

Similar Discussions