Budgeting your wallet is the same as curbing data usage today.  Mobile providers have lost their unlimited plans and now cap users, limiting them to extremely low numbers, which app developers have to accommodate for as well.  This means instead of watching Netflix,  just check your email instead.

Since most mobile operators – including AT&T – now only offer capped data plans, iPhone users need to watch their data. Onavo found that the difference between Twitter for iPhone and TweetDeck could be as much as $2 a session, under the most extreme data plans.

Onavo (an app which manages data on the iPhone which runs in the background) also found:

• More than one in five (22%) iPhone users in the US have a Twitter app installed. In Spain this rises to 34%, in China in drops to 7%.

• The most popular client is the native Twitter app (Twitter for iPhone – 65%), followed by TweetDeck and TweetBot (8% each) and EchoFon (4%)

• No two Twitter clients are the same when it comes to data consumption:

– The most efficient is TweetDeck, followed by TweetBot

– The biggest data hog: Twitter for iPhone, followed by EchoFon

From TechCrunch

This isn;t a big concern for such a “byte sized” communication tunnel like Twitter.  Like I mentioned,  the portability of Netflix is one to suffer.  Twitter and email are ones that shouldn’t ever have to worry about that.

TweetBot for iPhone is my favorite application. According to that report, it’s good to know that it won’t chew up my data usage.  Bottom line is to keep tabs on your data.  Apps that may not be considered to be worry-some,  might end up being a surprise.