I just got my monthly phone bill and was surprised to see it’s $15 higher than usual. I tracked down the cause to the Wyze app, which on the day I activated my new Wyze Cam OG Telephoto 3x used a whopping 1.4 GB of mobile data, 140 times my daily norm. Data usage returned to normal the following day. Why would this have happened? It added $15 to the cost of the camera.
If your internet bill went up (via your phone or 5G internet service) that would be normal.
If it was strictly your phone, my guess would be you were watching the video and toying around with it. Does not take long at all to add up 1.4G of streaming video. Make sure you’re on wifi as much as possible.
1 Like
If you have a pay what you use data plan on your phone instead of unlimited, I would avoid using the Wyze App when you’re away from home and not on WiFi because streaming cameras through the internet can use a lot of data. I just checked a list of devices on my network and I had one camera that used 12.1GB in the last 24hrs. I have 10 Wyze cams that used over 1GB in the last 24hrs.
I’m guessing you have CP Light or Cam Plus - so a lot of that is probably just uploading to Wyze servers and not actually consuming your phone bandwidth.
My OGs and Panv3s will use about 2.5 megabits per second or about a megabyte every 3 seconds.19 megs per minute, 1.1gig per hour. But fire up a cam group or monitoring view with several cameras, that increases exponentially.
My phone is 5 gigs per month (rarely even use 1, most of my use is at home on wifi). So I have to be careful but not overly, I’m not watching it constantly while away, just checking in if there is an event.
Oh for sure, I should’ve clarified…my point was simply that camera streaming can use a lot of bandwidth. If I’d been streaming all those events through my phone, then my phone would’ve used that much data too. I was simply indicating that cameras use a lot of bandwidth, so if you are streaming through your phone, you’re going to use a lot there too.
Thank you for the better details. That’s the point I was trying to make, but I didn’t really track it on my phone. I could only check the logs from my router that do track how much each device is using for video streaming. 
Yup absolutely, it is a good indication of what they are capable of. Just didn’t want OP to think they were going to use tens or hundreds of gigs on their phone just having the app installed.
For the 1080P cams my observation from watching on my router (and it actually lines up pretty well with the data rate that used to be shown in the v2.5 app) is around 350KBytes per second per stream. I know I’ve mentioned bits and bytes which can get confusing, but the 350KByte/sec is probably the most useful number, that’s easiest to multiply and correspond to what it will use on your phone (since your phone and phone plan are in bytes).
On the v4 and other 2.5K cams, I’d assume that is higher, not sure exactly how much, I’d guess up to 50% for 1440P (2.5K) vs 1080P, but they may also be using higher compression to account for some of that, not sure.
1 Like
Aha. I set up the camera in my home using two phones that should both have been on wifi, but you must be right – one must have been on cellular for at least a while. I’m now using one of them (an old phone I no longer make calls with) as a dedicated screen for this cam and confirmed it’s on wifi. Luckily the data overage only lasted one day. Live & learn. Thanks for the explanation.
[Mod Edit]: Fixed post formatting issue.
1 Like
Does this just happen to subscribers? I never noticed an issue with GBs burning at a fast rate. Luckily, I have unlimited data without any subscription. Maybe I should track my usage?
No I have no subscription and it uses around a gig and hour to watch live stream. Other than that it is minimal to send notifications with a still frame.
Subscription does impact your home Internet use especially if using AI features so that’s a concern for people with data caps on home Internet.
2 Likes
Are you actually watching the cam while it is streaming for the whole hour or do you see this when running in the background?
I usually just check the cams quickly and exit. Maybe a couple of times I watched the yard guys, but rarely do that.
Only did it once, was away from home and watching a big storm at my house, tree had fallen on neighbors car and just left it up to keep an eye. Wasn’t watching the whole time but the screen was up and streaming.
If you switch apps while watching or even turn off the screen I think the stream stops, as when you go back in it re-establishes the connection to the cam.
1 Like
You care correct.
It is mostly because those cameras are on Cam Plus, some of them uploading to the amazon cloud storage nearly constantly (in 2K) because they are high traffic areas. I am sure most people don’t have that much usage. I’ve had at least 68.3GB total used on Wyze cams in the last 24hrs, but I have over 50 cameras…so…I’m not normal either. People without the subscription are not using anywhere NEAR those amounts because they don’t have near constant uploading of events like I do.
1 Like
Which explains why when I looked side by side at image quality of the OG (FHD 1080P) and v4 (QHD 1440P), there was hardly any difference. Completely still with no motion, bit of an advantage to the v4, otherwise, pretty similar (and the OG was actually better at night due to higher res sensors needing more light).
If there was no compression (I calculated mine are over 99% compressed) you’d be able to zoom way in and read a license plate clearly even when moving. But it is what it is, if I wanted that kind of quality, I’d invest in a closed circuit system with NVR.
1 Like
Correct again. This is something many of us have been hard-pressing Wyze about:
- Lay off the excessive compression
- Increase the bitrate
Jon thenetguy actually did some pretty good tests demonstrating the compression with a cool compression wheel he has that lets you visually see how bad the compression is at blurring details.
We have recently had an employee mention they have been having internal discussions about these things.
I think they are concerned that if they do either or both of these things that all the people with bad internet or routers will have a bad experience and blame Wyze and not realize it’s their router &/or ISP/bandwidth that suck, and they “KNOW” for sure it’s Wyze and not their horrible system because their phone works fine or their TV streams, etc. They already get tons of non-technical people who have environments that can barely handle a 1080p cam, thinking Wyze sucks and has nothing to do with them…this would happen exponentially (with more calls to support) the more they decrease compression and increase bitrates.
I’m trying to convince them to build some options into at least the PRO line of cameras such as at least allowing it to record to the SD card without compression, and allow an option to live stream LOCALLY (when on the same router) with a higher bitrate, but still only upload to cam plus with the lower quality and if the camera seems to have network or connectivity issues in some way, they can have the camera set to detect these issues and switch the person back to using the lower quality. Something like that would be reasonable IMO. I do understand their concerns about fearing it would make the cameras less usable by some people.
Who knows what they will though. At least we got them talking about it.
2 Likes
Yeah I believe I voted last year for a feature like that, but I’m guessing the compression is done in the camera chipset before it even hits the file system and TCP/IP stack so it may not be possible, at least on current cams, without a redesign. But I don’t know how they’re designed internally so just a guess there. Would probably be an “all or nothing” compression change, i.e. SD card and cloud.
I’d happily fit only 1/2 or even 1/4 of the history on an SD card in exchange for better quality video.
I’m guessing part of their concern is cost of upload/download into AWS too. I’m guessing if they did ever release such a feature, it might be subscribers only (at which point I might consider it, assuming the price stays around where it is today).
1 Like
Hello all. Not sure if this is related. We use Wyze as a baby camera overnight. Lately, it’s been consuming 5GB+ of mobile data overnight. I have Data Saver = on, Background Data = off and Adaptive Connectivity (WiFi Assist) = off. The app is somehow flipping Background Data to on; it then stays on mobile data the rest of the night and won’t switch back to WiFi. Help!
Maybe there is a bug then. This is the 3rd report I’ve seen of this.
@darren.e.marsh & @locutor will you please post your exact app version number so we can try to narrow down the issue.
To get your exact App version: Open the app → Go to the Account tab → Select About
Also, Please submit a log and post your log number here.
Note: Submitting a log is NOT the same thing as opening a support ticket and there will be no response to the log.
1 Like
v3.0.5(558)
Cam Unlimited subscription on all cameras.
Stupid question–how to I submit a log?
Thanks for your help.
1 Like
Wow! Incredible 
It is a good thing that electrons do not pollute.
I wouldn’t think an app would be able to cause your phone to switch from wifi to mobile data. Even with adaptive connectivity off, if it has no internet, your phone will switch to mobile data (as far as I know, I’m not an iPhone expert though). Maybe your ISP is doing upgrades overnight (happen to have Xfinity, they’re doing a lot of work for the new 10G stuff)?