Onavo is an app which cuts your cellphone data use drastically. Amazingly, it works in the background even on the iPhone and iPad, which sounds like some kind of impossible voodoo given Apple's strict multitasking rules.

It turns out that the app does actually compress data, but not how you think. Once installed, it performs some tweaks to your network settings and runs all you non-Wi-Fi data through a proxy. Thus, any incoming data to Safari, Mail, Facebook, Google Maps and Twitter passes through Onavo's servers where it is heavily compressed before being forwarded on to your iPhone.

This is similar to what Opera does when you use its iOS browser, but it works system wide.

Comments on the iTunes App Store page say that it works, with several caveats. First, images are compressed so drastically that they can pixelate, making the tiles in the Maps app hard to read, for example. Also, sometimes visual voicemail disappears, and you'll lose the ability to tether your data connection. And of course you are running your data through a third-party server, which could give you the privacy heebie-jeebies.

Onavo is free, and although its probably not worth using at home thanks to the above problems, it could save you a lot of money when you're on vacation with a roaming plan. What it won't do is compress streaming video or VoIP calls, which are probably your biggest data-sinks, further limiting its utility. An Android version is coming "soon."

Onavo product page [Onavo]

FAQ [Onavo]

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