The days of unlimited cell phone usage are coming to an end for most mobile smartphone users. Even those unlimited plans still around often throttle your data after a certain cap, making everything noticeably slower. Besides the obvious (don’t watch a lot of videos or a lot of apps), here are some tips to lower your data usage.
Turn mobile web when possible. There are many times that you don’t do your 3G work or 4G internet access. When you’re walking between Wi-Fi hotspots, driving home, or out for a walk, you’re probably not using the internet, but your phone is adding various apps (and using bandwidth). Turn it off when you’re not using it, and you’ll save yourself a KB here and there.
Use Opera Mini. Opera Mini compresses pages and images so you can load them faster and use less bandwidth. You can also go to the settings and define how much you want to compress the images (on most screens “medium” is fine), or even not to extract them at all except when using data. Opera Mini claims to compress sites by up to 90%, which can mean huge savings.
App update only when on Wi-FI. You may not know this, but your apps can cost you many GB for updates and downloading without care. Go to Google play settings and check “Update via Wi-Fi only” make sure your phone isn’t downloading updates that can wait.
Carrier monitoring app. While your carrier may provide some monitoring data on your phone, it may only update a few times a day, something you may inadvertently pass up in front of you. to perceive I used Netcounter, which updates almost instantly. It also allows you to set alerts for daily, weekly, or monthly use. Put it under your data cap for a little while so you know when it was last month.
Pre-cache your Google Maps. If you know you need maps for a specific area, download them in advance you can set the time on the Wi-Fi connection, so you don’t need to go to the band. This is also useful when you can wander, or (hungry) wander completely. Just hit the menu, click “available online” and choose the area you need.
