Transaction fees of mobile bitcoin wallets can vary with some set by the user and some set and controlled by the wallet provider.
Here we look at 2 wallets. Airbitz and Bitcoin Wallet. They are both available from Apple/Google app store. Note the number of downloads of each wallet from Google Play at the time of this writing:
Airbitz: 354
Bitcoin Wallet: 12,629
The bitcoin wallet charges a transaction or “network fee” of 0.08 mBTC which equates to about 5 US cents (at current exchange rates).
Airbitz on the other hand charges 0.071mBTC which equates to just under 5 US cents. 0.071mBTC is the equivalent of 7 NZ cents.
Note that both wallets do not provide options to adjust the network fee. Airbitz does state that the network fee, here referred to as the mining fee is controlled by them.
Airbitz mining fee is already adjustable but we control it server side. There are hard limits so that a hack on the server doesn’t cause users to lose lots of money. We’ve just recently increased the fee to compensate for the current stress on the network. Transactions over ƀ30,000 will send a ƀ400 mining fee and transactions below that will scale down to as low as ƀ30. Since the fee is adjustable and based on the amount of traffic, the numbers could be different from what is currently published on the FAQ.
Source: https://airbitz.co/go/faq/how-do-i-adjust-the-mining-fee/
Conclusion:
The network fee is proportional to the speed of confirmation on the network. The higher the fee, the faster your transaction will be confirmed on the blockchain and vice versa. The inability to set the network fee is to increase simplicity, however it is important to understand what the network fees are across different wallets.
