Top 10 Mobile Data Saving Tips for Android Phones
Are you looking for a way to reduce the data used by your Android phone? There are many ways which can make your Android phone consume less data and keep your mobile data bill in check. Here in this article, we have listed some handy tips to help you save data while using your Android phone.
1. Use Mobile Data only when needed
Many a times, we leave the mobile data turned on after using the phone, this leads to many apps in the background to consume mobile data to sync their data and to send you push notifications. In-order to stop that from happening, the best way is to turn off mobile data whenever you are not using the phone. However, this may not be an option always as you may want to receive notifications from messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Messenger even when you are not using the phone. If that is the case then you may want to look at other ways listed below to save your mobile data.
2. Use WiFi whenever available
The other common way to save your mobile data is to use WiFi whenever available. You should keep the WiFi password remembered and allow your phone to auto connect to known WiFi networks so that you consume most of the data over a WiFi network. Even if you are traveling, many public places and transports as well as cafes and restaurants provide you with free WiFi which you can connect to instead of using your mobile data.
3. Terminate Apps in Background
Another good habit is to terminate apps that you are no longer using. By default, Android keeps the app running in the background even if you press the back or home button and start using another app. Many other apps register a background service to keep themselves running all the time. Such apps can keep on consuming data of your device. The best way to find and kill such apps is to use your device’s inbuilt data usage statistics. Also, make use of security settings to restrict data usage in the background by such apps.
4. Restrict App Updates to WiFi Only or Manually
Do you know that you can instruct Play Store to download app updates over WiFi only? By default, Android apps update automatically and can lead to unnecessary consumption of mobile data if you don’t select the option to update them only over WiFi. Another good measure is to simply turn off automatic app updates and set it to manual. This will allow you to select and update only those apps that you really need and uninstall any app that you are no longer using without updating them.
5. Keep Content Offline
Many apps allow to cache data and keep them offline. You should always make sure to turn this option on. If you watch videos and listen to any music for more than once, then keeping them offline can further help you save your mobile data. In certain countries, you can download YouTube videos to watch offline. Even in browsers you can download webpages and can access them offline if you need them on multiple occasions.
6. Uninstall data-hungry Apps & Games
Many apps and games are notorious and use a lot of your data to show you ads (especially video ads). You can watch the data used by apps and games in your device’s data usage statistics and completely uninstall such apps and games as they are generally heavy on your device battery too.
7. Play Games with Data turned off
A simple trick to save data is to turn your mobile data off when playing games. Games which can be played offline, often use the mobile data to show you ads and track your usage. By turning off the mobile data, you can continue to enjoy your game without letting it use your data.
8. Use a Data Saving Browser
Browsing internet can eat up a lot of internet data as many web pages are loaded with heavy images and advertisements. Using a data saving browser such as Opera Mini can help you reduce the data consumed while surfing the internet. Such browsers can also strip ads and allow the web pages to load faster. Additionally, you can disable loading of images and scripts while surfing the web to save more data.
9. Reduce Video Quality while watching Videos
Video streaming sites such as YouTube and Vimeo often stream video at highest possible quality based on your network speed. You can manually reduce the video quality to an acceptable limit to reduce data consumed while watching online videos.
10. Use Data Saving Mode in Phone and Apps
Many Android smartphones have an inbuilt data saving mode which can be accessed via settings. You can turn this on to restrict usage of data by apps in the background. Some leading apps such as Facebook also offer a data saving mode. Turning on data saving mode in Facebook will restrict auto-playing of videos and will do other data optimizations.
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