SMS vs MMS, and data usage discrepancy

[g_s]

My plan is supposed to include "...unlimited messaging plus unlimited international text and picture messaging." However, I need to turn data on to view images I have been sent via text. What is the nature of this unlimited picture messaging I supposedly have?

Also, my phone shows a different volume of data used compared to what this site shows under my account. The difference is 65mb—too large for a simple buffer or rounding error. What could I attribute this to?

[dust2dust]

I think you nailed it. It needs cell data turned on (or a setting to turn it on and off when needing to transmit/receive an MMS). It's the way to send pictures around. You can also email pictures. You can also put pictures on a cloud storage service and give people the link to them.

When your phone connects to the internet whether by cell data or wifi it will do some sync-ing with servers and such. It might also want to update the operating system or the installed apps. Be sure to set the updates to wifi only. And be sure to turn off the use of cell data to all but the apps you want to update/sync.

[softech · Accepted solution]

@g_s 

First, sending or receiving pictures are MMS and MMS does require turning on Mobile data to download, but it won't count against your data bucket

For your phone's data tracker, make sure you aware PM is on a 30 days cycle and cycle start date changes after a 31 days month.  The phone tracker does not do 30 days tracking automatically, so, you will have to manually change the Start billing cycle on date to matches your current PM cycle start date