Let's face it -- no one likes tiered data plans. Still, it is something that most of us have to deal with, and I've never met anyone who wants to suffer the result of going over their allotted bandwidth. Fortunately, Google is offering a nice, proactive solution (not to be confused with the face cream that gets rid of acne, that's something else entirely) to help users avoid connection speed slowdowns or, even worse, surprise overage fees.

The band-aid for this menacing problem is a built-in data monitor, which is designed to provide crucial information about which apps are using your bandwidth and how much you have left, as well as warn you or disable all mobile data when you hit a user-definable limit.

The data usage feature does more than that, though -- it can also anticipate how much data you may use for the rest of your billing cycle based on your previous usage, show you an app-by-app breakdown of where your bandwidth is going, and even allow you to disable background mobile data connectivity on a per app basis.

If I had to pick, I would say this could easily be the most useful feature in Ice Cream Sandwich, but I'll wait until I actually get it in-hand to make that claim.