Marguerite Reardon at Cnet is worried that the upcoming data caps are going to “force developers to be efficient”. Which I raised an eyebrow at, because I’d hope that any decent developer out there is already coding as efficiently as possible. If they can’t make sensible use of data, what else are they not bothering about in application design? Should we be worried that smaller batteries will force developers to stop using tight coding loops next? Read on for more.

While Reardon is quite right to point out the potential negative of the return of bill-shock (or at least the worry of it), well coded applications just shouldn’t be pulling down huge amounts of data without user intervention or alerts.

It’s one reason that I much prefer travelling abroad with Ovi Maps and the ability to side-load all the maps first, and sync a local copy of all your points of interest. If I had to rely on Google Maps I’d be downloading data at a rate that would make my Bank Manager very happy.

This principle of the preservation of resources is something that underpins a lot of the Symbian OS – the relatively long standby times and battery life can be attributed to choices in the hardware, but it’s the power management in the kernel of the OS that also delivers a lot of the saving.

Symbian can quite happily live with a slow data connection over GPRS and still get adequate results – and in terms of bandwidth, my time in the US meant I stayed fully connected with only 40MB or so used in two weeks. Should we really complain about a 2GB monthly limit given those numbers?

So yes, from a marketing and PR perspective, the looming squeeze on “unlimited” data from certain networks around the world could cause some pain, but if you have planned your application (or your device) to run in a constrained environment then you really shouldn't be at all worried.

-- Ewan Spence, June 2010.