“Your data has been exhausted” may top the list as one of the worst text messages to get. We all dread running out of data. That’s why these data-saving tips are important to keep in mind. Like the popular saying goes, data is life. It also does not help that mobile service carriers seem to swindle us. We all agree there is no way we use up that much data, right? Someone lamented about using up 10GB in five days and we all know there had to be more to it.
After all is said and done, we obviously don’t have a lot of control on the service providers. However, what we have control over are our phones. We can decide to tweak some setting that can reduce our data consumption. It is important to ensure that we are getting the best out of our money and avoiding wastage.
Tips to help you save money on data
Data settings
Getting familiar with your data settings will help you understand some tricks and hacks. In order to fix a problem, you will need to first find out why. It will make sense to first check what is taking up the most data on your device. This will help you to cut down on your usage of these apps. On your iPhone, you can go to your settings and tap on the Cellular option to see your data usage information.
Just like the iPhone, most other phones will have the data usage information somewhere in the Settings. An Android phone, for example, will have the information in the Network and Internet area. This will let you know how much data each app consumes. Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and Twitter are some of the apps that are data gobblers. You get carried away and, before you know it, you have used up 2GB in an hour. You can turn off data for some of these apps when you are not using them.
Another thing you could do in the Settings is to stop refreshing apps automatically. This will prevent the device from using your data to refresh apps in the background. On both Android and iOS devices, you can turn off App Refresh in the Settings app. Android users can, however, turn off Auto-Sync on the menu that shows how much data the apps use.
If you have access to Wi-Fi sometimes, another thing you want to do is to turn off data for your app store. This will prevent your phone from doing automatic updates when you are running on data. You can also turn off automatic updates on your iOS device to conserve data.
Download, don’t stream
One of the useful tips to know that it will save your data in the long run if you decide to download instead of stream. The downloads are better done when you are connected to Wi-Fi. You can then get to them when you are out of Wi-Fi coverage, even if you don’t have access to Wi-Fi.
Downloading with your mobile data is way better than streaming because you can always go back to it. The data you are wasting listening to one thing online over and over again is waste. This is compared to doing an offline download. So you may want to consider offline downloads from YouTube and music streaming apps like Deezer.
Turn off mobile data
You should turn off your mobile data every chance you get. It will do you a world of good to keep it turned off, especially when you are doing heavy things on Wi-Fi. You may not know that the Wi-Fi has gone off, and the app will begin to use your data. Some people turn off their data overnight. That might be something you may want to consider too.