Do you find yourself running out of mobile data before payday each month or needing to spend far more of your monthly budget on data than you’d like to? Chances are that a few of your favourite apps are to blame for your high spending on mobile data.
But the good news is that you can cut back on mobile data without compromising your experience. TCL offers a few tips for saving data on your Android smartphone.
What apps are killing your data?
Social media apps, including Facebook, Tik-Tok, Twitter and Instagram are among the major culprits for using up your data. They frequently refresh themselves in the background; they also often autoplay videos as you scroll through your feed.
Messaging apps such as WhatsApp can also be data hogs, especially if you send and receive a lot of videos and images. Online gaming sessions can use up loads of data, too. Finally, music and video streaming apps such as YouTube, Spotify and Netflix can chew through enormous amounts of your data if you are not careful.
What can you do to reduce data consumption?
- Remember to use Wi-Fi whenever you can
Be sure to connect to Wi-Fi-, whenever it’s available. If you’re planning a long video call or want to download a lot of media, do so when you have access to Wi-Fi rather than using your mobile data. Always try to do more data-intensive tasks like updating or downloading apps or playing online games from Wi-Fi.
- Download content while you’re on Wi-Fi
If you know you’re going to be away from a Wi-Fi connection, make sure to download the music and movies you want to enjoy. You can download high-quality without worrying using up your data bundle or running up your costs.
- Adjust media quality
Apps such as YouTube and Netflix allow you to automatically play media at a lower quality when you’re on a cellular connection. This will reduce your data consumption, although you will need to view your media at a lower resolution.
- Turn off video autoplay
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all have data-saver settings that allow you to turn off video autoplay. This can save you plenty of data you might otherwise waste on content you weren’t interested in viewing in the first place.
- Disable background refreshes
Many apps constantly update themselves with new content in the background, no matter if you want them to or not. Go to your device’s settings to review which apps have access to this feature. Disable it for apps that you don’t use much or where real-time updates aren’t important.
- Use data saver mode
To help you use less mobile data on a limited data plan, you can turn on Data Saver. This mode lets most apps and services get background data only via Wi-Fi. Currently active apps and services can use mobile data.
