Microsoft has confirmed that the built-in Twitter app in Windows smartphones is causing overusage of data, and has offered a temporary fix until both the companies work out a permanent solution.
Alert to all those data watchers! Microsoft has confirmed that the built-in Twitter application on its Windows Phone, is causing the profile images for Twitter contacts to download over and over again. This has exhausted users' mobile data, exceeding the designated limit for some users.
The issue first came to light when The Verge reported the problem to Microsoft. The software giant investigated the issue and learned that the problem may be arising from Twitter's end.
The social networking giant is currently in the midst of moving all profile pictures to another server. It is likely that this process has triggered certain Windows Phone users to lose enormous mobile data.
According to The Verge, the problem was found in the People Hub, which hosts the built-in Twitter client. This section had used over 300MB of mobile data and over 3GB of Wi-Fi in less than a week of Windows smartphone, Verge found. This is an alarming amount of data drain, especially for those who cap their data use at 512MB or 1GB.
Since Twitter is currently in the process of moving the pictures on to another server that will take a few more weeks, Microsoft has not been able to effectively find a permanent solution for the issue. However, the software giant has come up with a more reasonable temporary fix that can control the data drain.
Users can choose to have the People hub sync to Twitter only once a day, which will not re-download the profile images frequently. This setting is recommended until Twitter has completed its migration or Microsoft rolls out a better fix.
