Hey everyone! If you're someone who's always on the go and only rely on your phone's data to connect to the internet, here are some tips that you may want to consider in order to save on bandwidth and avoid going above your data limit: 1. Keep a watchful eye on your data usage - most of us don't really pay that much attention to our data usage despite having a cap on our cellular plans. We just wait at the end of the month only to find out that we have gone overboard our limit. Did you know that most smartphones have built-in data meter? Just go to your iOS, Android, or Windows mobile's settings and check for Data Usage. Alternatively, you can download apps to help you monitor your usage and help you save at the same time.Log In is a good example of such apps. 2. Automatic Updates / Sync - it's always good to keep your apps always up-to-date but you should pay close attention to automatic updates on your smartphone specially if you're not on a wifi. Make sure that you disable automatic updates on your device to save on data. You may also disable automatic syncing on your online storage app (DropBox, Google Drive, etc). 3. Keep away from streaming HD - did you know that a typical 10-minute HD video on YouTube is roughly adds 50MB on your data usage? We all know that streaming HD is pleasant to the eyes but we should stay away from HD playback as much as possible if we're on mobile Data. In YouTube, you can change video playback to lower resolutions such as 480p or even 360p by going to account settings (don't play HD while on mobile data). 4. Avoid Peer-to-peer sharing apps - although it's highly not advisable to use such apps, one should try to avoid using P2P apps such as torrent clients in order to not use up all your data allowance. 5. Secure your wifi - this is applicable if you're sharing your mobile data connection or if your ISP sets a data cap on your internet plan. Make sure that your wireless network is secured by always setting a password. You can also hide your Wireless Network (SSID) from your neighbor to avoid them from penetrating your network. You may also check if your router has the guest SSID feature so that you can monitor your guests data usage. Hopefully, with all the tips I provided, I can help you in saving on your data usage thus avoiding incurring unnecessary charges. Happy surfing!
Thank you for those tips @mccanono. My husband has actually experienced being charged extra fees because of his automatic phone updates. He never knew about it until his monthly bill came and when he saw that he had some extra bill to pay, he called our service provider and they informed him that his internet usage might have been used up by his automatic updates. From then on, he made sure that he turned off automatic updates on his phone and just manually update his chosen apps instead.
I should also add that you should use smaller devices where it is applicable. I normally use a small phone to access the internet and have discovered that they use less bandwidth as opposed to larger devices. Another way is to go to your download settings and adjust the image filters. Images use a higher bandwidth per download. Smaller fonts are also economical compared to larger fonts.
Thanks for great tips I think it is also ideal to use modern data compression techniques while browsing. For example Chrome’s data saver feature reduces data consumption to a considerable extent. According to Google it can save up to 50% of your data cost, but it actually depends on what type of contents you are surfing. I would also stop auto playing of videos (mostly advertisements) by making some changes in the browser settings. I think videos eat up our data faster than we think. First thing I would do is to disable the auto update feature and I would make it to “notify me in case of an update” so that I can do it at my convenience.