These tips will help reduce your mobile data usage
▶Check your Data Usage
First things first, let’s check how much data you’re using. On Android, open your phones data usage menu (Settings > Mobile Data/Data Usage)
And on iPhone you can check your data usage by going to (Settings > Cellular and taking a look under Cellular Data Usage) to find out how much you’ve used and which apps are using the most data and what you need to do to cut down on your data usage. There you can also set mobile data limit, a great way of avoiding an unwelcome extra charge on your bill and a warning when you approach it.
▶ Restrict Background Data
For Android users, in the Data Usage settings menu, tap on any of the apps listed to show more information about how much data they’re using, including a breakdown of its foreground and background data use.
Apps will often refresh and update in the background, even if you’re not using them, in order to open faster and provide up-to-date information. Enabling Restrict background data can significantly reduce your data usage.
▶ Disable auto-updates
If you own an Android phone, go to Google Play Store > Settings > Auto-Update apps and select ‘Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only’. This way, your phone will wait until your connected to a Wi-Fi network before it updates your apps.
▶ Using firewall to controls internet access for apps
Most of the apps on your Android device probably require a data connection, and you may not even know when they are sending or receiving data. Firewall puts you in control of Internet access for apps, as well as how they can access it.
There are many firewall apps on the Google’s play store, but most of them requires root access to work. So i recommend you to download this NoRoot Firewall if your Android device is not rooted. As the name suggests, the app doesn’t require you to root your Android. Instead, it creates a VPN and diverts all the traffic on your phone through it. This way, you can choose which traffic you want to allow and which you want to stop. When any app tries to access the Internet, you’ll get an alert where you can allow or deny it and save the setting for the future. This level of control can also let you see when a certain app is accessing data for ads and block it.
▶ Wi-Fi is your friend
It sounds pretty obvious, but try to use Wi-Fi whenever possible (free Wi-Fi is always sweet). Whether you’re connected to the home, school or office Wi-Fi or making use of a hotspot, you should take advantage of any chance you get to use Wi-Fi instead of your mobile data.
▶ Using mini browser’s and reducing the image quality of your browser
Mini browser’s like Opera mini, Opera Max, Uc browser mini etc to browse the internet can help to reduce data usage, as they will compress images, video, webpages, and even the data sent by apps installed on your phone. Thereby reducing rate of data consumption.
You can also save data by reducing the quality of images from your browser settings or off the image entirely if not necessary.
▶ Manually close certain apps
Some data-hungry apps that are left open, or simply due to default settings on your phone that you weren’t aware of can chew through your data without you realising it.
Pressing the back button when exiting out of apps, instead of the home button, will close down your apps. However for certain apps such as GPS (maps), video or audio streaming (Youtube, Rdio, ) or Skype go to Settings > Application > Manage Applications > Running, then open the app you wish to close and force close.
▶ And if you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi network, avoid or limit the usage of popular messaging apps like Facebook, Viber, BBM and WhatsApp as they use a lot of data to send messages – there’s nothing wrong with a good old fashioned text or phone call!
If you have any tips or ways to protect our mobile data, let us know in the comments below