A few months ago, @bjango (makers of the pretty cool iStat Menus) gave away free copies of their iPhone application Consume. I downloaded it and thought: Bjango stuff? A must have. Doing the linking here, I saw that it’s still free

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do much with it. I had my hacked iPhone 2G (that was recently replaced with a “clean” iPhone 4) and my provider Simyo was (and is still not) supported.

But now, since I moved to T-Mobile Germany, I’m happy to report that this iPhone app helps me a lot. I’m not using my iPhone as much as others, I’m sure. Mostly being in the home office, I don’t do calls using it, but it’s very nice to have a mobile internet device when I’m on the road to visit customers or simply doing private things. Because of that, I’m using the smallest data plan (Complete 60) which allows me to do 60 minutes calls in a months (+ free calling every weekend). Internet traffic is set to just 200MB/month. I know that’s not much, but so far it’s enough.

Using these limited services (and having to pay for every additional minute and MB), is a risky thing. Here is where Consume shows it’s power.

Consume allows me to log in using my T-Mobile credentials and uses them to display me how much minutes and MB I’ve used in the current period and how much I’ve left. Having a look at these data helps you not to run into additional costs – and don’t be afraid – it just takes a few KB to upgrade your information.

Additionally, Consume also allows to view other accounts, for example your Dropbox. This is VERY handy, I just wish they had Amazon S3 in their list

A last thing that I’ve to mention is, that before you go out and download this application on the iTMS, check if your provider and country is supported! For Germany, T-Mobile is the only provider available.

Ciao
Dennis

PS. No, these bars are real, not faked Good network coverage = a lot of bars.