Although Data is much cheaper today compared to the early days of GSM services in Nigeria but the reality is that Data runs faster today because of the number of services like apps, games, entertainment and many more.
Here are three ways to help you reduce your phone data usage going forward:
1. Limit Background Activity
Most Apps today live off your data in the sense that as long as they can sense it around they will keep feeding on it until it is completely exhausted. Android has built in tools that can help you monitor the process or you can simply use a good App like CM Security which already has over a 100 million downloads to monitor the process.
Examples of Data hungry Apps include Dropbox, Games that need Data to work, Facebook and most especially Google+ which comes by default on Android. To find the App consuming the most Data simply go to settings->battery and settings->data usage
I suggest you limit background data usage which you can do under the data usage settings.
2. Never use the Default Browser
The default browsers are simply data guzzlers in my opinion, your day to day browsers should be Opera Mini and UC Browser – these browsers will save your a lot of data compared to the one that come with your android phone or even the Google chrome.
3. Finally, Avoid Apps that Display Adverts
This is another way of saying avoid free apps and instead go for paid versions and the reason is simply most free apps use in-app adverts to stay afloat but what is may not know is that each time you open that app and the advert displays and keeps rotating that on its own consumes some data compared to an app that does not display ads.
My advice if its an App you use often then you should either find an ad-free alternative or support the developer by going for a premium version which will cost you under $5 or at the very most under $10 which is quite rare. Of course the choice is yours but I can assure you that if you insist on using the ad supported free model then be sure that you would have spent much more after a month or two.
