Droid X: The Missing Manual

Data Manager

Here’s the section to head to when you want to control how your Droid X synchronizes data, and how to control certain aspect of how email works. What’s odd about this section is that when you tap it, you come to only a single entry—Data Delivery. You then have to tap that to get to these settings:

• Background data. Your Droid X regularly checks whether you’ve got email, looks for the latest weather updates, and sees whether there are updates to social networking sites you use on the Droid X, like Facebook and Twitter. When it finds changes, it syncs them in the background. That’s a good thing, but uses up a bit of battery life. If you don’t care about having the Droid X check for new updates and want to save some battery life, turn this setting off.

  Note

  If you uncheck the box next to “Background data”, you won’t be able to use the Android Market. When you try to use the Market, you get a warning that you first need to turn on the “Background data” setting, and you’re sent to this screen to do so.

• Data Roaming. When this setting is turned on, when you’re roaming—connected to a network other than Verizon—you can send and receive data, not just make phone calls. Depending on your service plan, data roaming can be expensive, so check your plan and then decide whether to turn this ability off.

  Note

  To find out how to turn roaming in general on or off, see Mobile Networks.

• Data enabled ...