Increasingly, smartphones are used not only in everyday life, but also in the work environment, so it is important to pay attention to how much data they consume. It can be a personal smartphone at the workplace or issued by the company, in any case, traffic costs money. If its consumption level is not optimized, the money will be wasted.
Unlimited tariffs for mobile Internet are expensive, most often tariffs are applied with a certain amount of traffic, for which you need to pay extra for exceeding. There are also tariffs with payment for each megabyte. In this case, it is especially important to minimize traffic consumption.
Fortunately, the settings of the Android operating system allow you to reduce traffic consumption without a significant impact on the quality of work with the device. The 12 recommendations on this issue will be described below.
Traffic consumption diagnostics
Before you can solve the problem, you need to understand it, so open your smartphone settings and find the section called "Data transfer". Look for the section here "Mobile Data".
You'll see a detailed overview of which apps have been using your bandwidth the most in the last 30 days. If you wish, you can set the period for which you will view traffic consumption. Social networking apps, browsers, video and audio streaming programs, and the Play Store are the most common spenders.
Click on an app or service to take a closer look at data consumption. It shows how much is spent in the active mode, and how much in the background.
Disable unnecessary background activity
When you find out what and how much traffic is spent, it's time to solve this issue. First, cut down on unnecessary data usage in the background. Social networks and news apps differ in this, as they most often check for content updates at regular intervals. You can disable this behavior, usually you won't notice much difference.Open social and news apps one by one and check their settings to save data. For example, in the Twitter app on Android, there is a section in the settings called "Data usage". Click on it and uncheck the box "Sync data", this will not prevent you from receiving notifications, for which there is a separate settings section.
Apps like Flipboard have a section called "Reducing data consumption", which is by default set to "Full Use". Change the option to "On demand" or "Do not use mobile data", because you don't need to update the news if you're not looking at the app.
If you have an app that consumes a lot of data in the background and cannot be controlled in any way in the settings, like Facebook, use system-level control. Open section Settings > Apps and select the desired program. On the screen that appears, click on the section "Data transfer" and turn off the switch "Background mode". This will prevent the program from running in the background unless you are connected to a Wi-Fi network.
You need to be careful about disabling background activity. For example, if you disable it in the messenger, you will not receive messages when the smartphone screen is off. Surely you do not want to miss messages from your contacts. The same applies to Facebook, until you start it manually, you won't know that there are new activity notifications from other users.
Stop autoplay
Video consumes a lot of data, and many applications have a bad habit of launching it as soon as you turn your back. Social networks like to play videos automatically when you scroll through the news feed, but you can disable this.
In the Facebook application, you can open the main menu and in the settings there are options to prevent autoplay. On Twitter, you'll find a similar option under Data Usage, where you can turn off image previews in your feed and disable high-quality video when using mobile networks. Instagram, Snapchat and other social networks have similar settings. Find them and turn them off.
Data compression when working on the mobile Internet
Next, you need to force the browser to spend less traffic. The Google Chrome browser on Android has a feature called "Traffic Saver", enabling which compresses the data as it is sent to you. This not only saves traffic, but also makes sites open faster. This option is available at the very bottom of the settings window.
If you want to save traffic even more, use the Opera or Opera Mini browsers. They have their own options for compressing web pages, videos, and limiting file downloads to Wi-Fi networks only.
Optimize your music apps
Do you have the Google Play Music app? Open its settings and look for the "Mobile network quality" option. Install "Low" or "The average" and make sure that this sound quality is enough for you.Here, make sure the option is enabled. "Wi-Fi Only Transfer" and consider the option "Streaming Music Caching". It forces you to download each song you listen to on a device for local storage, so that when you listen again, you don’t have to waste bandwidth again.
If you often listen to the same songs, enable this option. If not, it is better not to touch it so as not to waste extra traffic, especially when choosing a low audio quality.
Play Music isn't the only app with these settings. Spotify, Pandora, and other music services and podcasts have similar controls. Always look into the settings in such applications and limit their traffic consumption.
Savings on YouTube
Continuing the theme of streaming, open the YouTube app and in the settings open the section "General". There is an option called "Saving traffic" to use the mobile Internet to broadcast video only in low quality, and leave HD for Wi-Fi networks.On the same page, disable the option "Autoplay".
Download multimedia content in advance
The best option to reduce your mobile data consumption when streaming is to avoid it altogether, and many apps allow you to do so. You just need to download the content in advance via Wi-Fi, so that it is stored locally on the device.If you have a Google Play Music subscription, you can download YouTube videos to watch at any time. In YouTube settings, find the section background & offline. If you don't have a Play Music subscription, this section is missing.
Navigation offline
What else does not hurt to download in advance is Google Maps. The next time you need to navigate, open the Maps app over Wi-Fi. Choose the route you need and download the desired map.
You can manage downloaded maps in the application settings in the "Downloaded areas" section.
Play Store
Apps need to be updated. But at the same time, the size of the updates can be large, so you can accidentally use up a lot of traffic on the mobile Internet.To prevent this from happening, open the Play Store, in the settings set the auto-update option to "Only via WiFi".
Fixing Leaks
It's time to think about unused applications. They need to be removed or at least disabled if they cannot be removed, especially if they are in the list of traffic consumers. They may consume some data, but why is it necessary?Checking Account Synchronization
In the settings, open the section "Accounts", click Google and select your account. Here you will see a long list of what is synced with the account. Most likely, you have never used some services. Disable their synchronization, if there are several accounts, repeat the process.Radical measures
If you want to save as much as possible, Android from the version has a Data Saver system tool that prevents most applications from using the mobile Internet if they are not open on the screen and are not actively used. They won't be able to run in the background, including notify you of incoming messages, unless you're on Wi-Fi or add apps to your exceptions list.This is a drastic measure if you want to at least temporarily reduce traffic consumption to a minimum. The option is located in the Android settings.
Almost every user of the World Wide Web knows such a thing as Internet traffic. If speak about mobile operators, then they have, the greater the amount of available traffic, the higher the cost. Most operators have tariffs that do not have traffic restrictions, but their cost is significantly higher than that of analogues with restrictions.
Determining where precious megabytes go is half the battle. The rational use of all the services of the global network should become a habit. Programs like uTorrent.exe should not run at startup and run idle.
How is Internet traffic measured?
The smallest unit of measurement of the received information is Bit. Depending on the situation and the volume consumed, the consumed data can be counted in Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes. The most common unit is Megabyte (MB).
Average sizes of the most popular files:
- three dozen pages on the Web or 400 text pages: 1 Mb;
- 5 high quality photos: 1 Mb;
- one audio file: 3-12 Mb;
- one video clip: 30-200Mb, movie: 600-1400Mb.
In conclusion, it should be said that the control and calculation of Internet traffic allows not only to avoid the need to pay inflated bills, but also to significantly save money without limiting yourself in using the Internet.
Greetings, dear readers! Most likely, you managed to work in Windows 10 for some time on a computer, tablet or laptop, got a little used to the new product from Microsoft, and downloaded a lot of important and useful programs from the Internet. Or not very helpful. And one day you might have thought: what is the amount of traffic I downloaded this month? Interesting? This is where I became interested. And now I'll show you where to find information on Internet usage for the last 30 days.
Let's go to Start -> Parameters -> Network and Internet. You can quickly open Settings with Win + I.
In section Network and Internet tab data usage you can see general information on all your network interfacesfor which the system has accumulated statistics. In this case, I only see Ethernet (a regular dedicated line via a cable). On tablets and laptops, Wi-Fi statistics will be displayed in this section.
So, you saw the numbers of downloaded gigabytes, your eyes widened and you wanted to know the details immediately. What applications on your device ate how much traffic you can find out if you click on the link Usage details.
Clicking on the link will open up more detailed information. You can clearly see which applications consumed the Internet how much. At this point, the data detailing ends, that is, you cannot find out the specific addresses of sites, which files were downloaded.
But that is not all! Information on downloaded gigabytes of invaluable traffic can be displayed as a live tile on the Windows 10 start screen. To do this, right-click on the section name data usage and click on the item Pin to home screen.
A confirmation pops up, click Yes.
The tile will appear on the home screen. If its size does not seem large enough to you, then right-click on the tile and select Resize -> Wide, as shown in the screenshot.
Well, it's become much more convenient, isn't it? Now you can always quickly assess the amount of downloaded data, just by opening the Start menu and glancing at the tile.
Hey! Despite the fact that the number of gigabytes (included by cellular operators in their tariffs) is growing every year, while the price, on the contrary, is falling, still not many can afford completely unlimited Internet on the device. Yes, and here it’s rather not a matter of “allowing”, but simply not many people need it. There is a conditional one gigabyte per month and it is enough - why pay more?
But in some cases (especially when switching to an iPhone from another device), these same gigabytes suddenly begin to be missed - when turned on, an Apple mobile phone starts wildly eating traffic and eats up the entire available limit in a few hours. And this is where the screams begin: “The iPhone is bad, I just inserted a SIM card - I don’t do anything, and the traffic goes away on its own (and the battery is running low too!)”. Ai-ai-ai and all that…:) Why is this happening? Believe me, not because the iPhone is bad and the company decided to ruin you. No.
The thing is that the iPhone, like any modern smartphone, has a number of settings that you just need to pay attention to in order to avoid such “arbitrariness” of your smartphone with your own Internet.
But first, a small list of where iPhone traffic can go without your knowledge:
An experienced reader and user will say: “Yes, there is still a lot where traffic can flow!”. And he will be right - mailbox updates, push notifications, browser, etc. all this also affects the number of gigabytes consumed, but:
- Say that push notifications, mail downloads, etc. downright strongly devour the entire cellular Internet - it is impossible. They use it, if at all, in very small quantities.
- And if you disable all this, as they suggest on many sites (the most ingenious advice I have come across is turn off the Internet in the settings so that it does not waste you), then why then the iPhone?
Therefore, let's try to get by with little bloodshed - we will prohibit the iPhone from consuming the Internet on its own, but without much damage to us.
Update or download apps from the App Store
Current applications and games can reach 2-3 gigabytes in size, and Apple has taken care of saving traffic - you can’t officially download a program larger than 150 megabytes from the App store (though we know). But at the same time, there are a large number of programs with a volume less than this threshold (150 MB). And that's it they can devour your Internet package.
Here we are talking not so much about downloading (you see what you are downloading), but about updating these programs on your own via a cellular network. Therefore, such an update must be disabled:
That's it, now the programs will no longer use the cellular network for their update, and will only do it via Wi-Fi.
How to find out which application "eats" traffic on the iPhone
Installed programs, in addition to simply updating their version, can consume the Internet in order to perform their usual functions. Therefore, if you really feel that megabytes are running away, it makes sense to check - or maybe some application is too “snacking”? You can do this:
Just in case, remember this moment so that in the future you will not be surprised why these cards (for example) refuse to work and update their data.
Sending "service information" can also waste the Internet
In fact, of course, this option does not consume mobile Internet so much and I myself have not encountered this, however, I have seen several stories that tell about this particular “glitch”, or a failure, when this very service information was sent constantly. Therefore, I decided to include this item here - it will not be superfluous to disable sending it for sure. How to do it?
As you can see in the explanation, this information is sent daily, and it does not carry any special load other than helping Apple improve its products. Therefore, if you turn off its transmission, then nothing terrible will happen, and traffic (even if small) will be saved.
"Help with Wi-Fi" - traffic on the iPhone flows away very quickly
"Wonderful" option, which is enabled by default for some reason. Its essence is that if your Wi-Fi signal “does not pull”, and the cellular network can provide the best speed, Wi-Fi will automatically turn off and data transfer will go through the SIM card.
I myself fell for this bait not so long ago - I sat watching videos on YouTube, did not bother anyone. Then the iPad didn’t like something in my Wi-Fi (bad signal, insufficient speed) and he considered it necessary to turn it off (which is important - no notifications come!), And I continued to enjoy the video via cellular connection in happy ignorance. I came to my senses only after the operator sent an SMS message with the text: "Your Internet package is coming to an end."
Therefore, in my opinion, if you do not have an unlimited tariff, this option should be disabled immediately. How to do it:
I repeat, this option should be turned off in almost any case, so that there are no surprises with the disappearance of traffic.
iCloud services sync eats up mobile data
iCloud is really good and convenient, and backups are generally beyond praise. However, if you care about saving precious megabytes on your tariff, then in this case the "cloud" will have to be turned off.
We are now talking about iCloud Drive - this is a kind of cloud data storage (I already talk about the principles of its operation). So, synchronization (downloading and uploading data) with this storage can occur over a cellular network. And it’s good if you sent a small object there, but what if it’s 100-200 megabytes? While it is downloading, all traffic will go away.
Yes, and ordinary programs can store their data there. And who knows how much they will load there? But it's good that all this can be turned off:
After that, the "cloud" will synchronize exclusively via Wi-Fi.
It would seem that each of the actions is quite simple and does not require much effort. But disabling and completing all items:
- Firstly, it will not cause much damage to the functionality of the iPhone.
- Secondly, it will help to save traffic and the Internet will not disappear anywhere.
P.S. Write in the comments if, even after performing all these steps, your iPhone is still too “gluttonous”.
Hello friends. Summer is in the yard, many people go on vacation, or somewhere far away from the city, and of course there is a problem, but what about the Internet? After all, somewhere outside the city it most likely will not be, and then what? Panic begins, tears and all that :).
Well, of course there is a way out, you just need to get mobile Internet. Can buy GPRS or 3G modem. In the first case, the speed will be lower, but most likely it will stably receive a signal almost everywhere. In turn, 3G technology will provide greater speed, but the signal will not be as stable and you may need to buy an antenna. I wrote about setting up 3G Internet in an article.
I switched to modems, but I wanted to write about how to save internet traffic. Well, of course, both GPRS and 3G Internet are not very cheap now, even expensive compared to the urban network. That is why I decided to write today's article. Since with the right approach, you can save a lot of Internet traffic and traffic is money.
All tariffs of mobile Internet operators have package restrictions or fees for spent Internet traffic, and in the first and second cases, tips on saving traffic will be useful.
First of all, I advise you to install a program on your computer that will measure the Internet traffic that you spend.
I recommend the program NetWorx. This program has a clear Russian interface, and can do a lot. You can measure traffic by hours, days, or as you like, you can set limits for a day or a month, and the program will warn you when your tariff plan ends, which will save you from unnecessary expenses, because traffic over the package is not very cheap.
Turn off the image
I remember when I was still using GPRS Internet through my phone, I always turned off displaying images in the browser. Graphics on web pages take a lot of traffic and this is very bad. It seems to me that surfing the Internet can be convenient even without pictures, but it’s a little not primary right away.
You can turn off the image in the settings of any browser. For example, in Opera go to “Tools”, “General settings” tab “Web pages” and where the image is selected “No images” and click "OK".
Now you can try to use the Internet without images, by the way, this method also very effectively increases the speed of loading pages.
Cache saves bandwidth
Cache, these are the elements of a web page that the browser saves on the computer and the next time it accesses these elements, it does not re-download them from the Internet. The cache is really good at saving traffic when you visit the same site many times. For example, you once logged into Vkontakte, the browser downloaded an image of your friends and saved them to your hard drive.
When you visit this site again, the browser will not re-download these pictures and thereby save internet traffic.
Internet traffic saving service
Although I am a supporter of all sorts of services and add-ons, I can advise Toonel.net to save traffic. This service compresses Internet traffic well and allows you to save money. By the way, the service is completely free.
Advertising is the main traffic eater
Something, but there is enough advertising on the sites now, even I have a little, but what about, I want to eat :). But advertising takes almost half of your traffic. Flash advertising does this especially well. To disable ads, you need to use add-ons for different browsers. Just type in any search engine " how to disable ads in opera(or other browser).
Separately, I would like to note an excellent feature in the Opera browser. Turbo mode helps save traffic and increase the speed of loading Internet pages with a not very fast connection. All traffic that you will request will pass and be processed through Opera's servers, and arrive on your computer already in a compressed form.
Activating Turbo mode is very simple. Go to the browser and find the button in the form of a speedometer at the bottom left (above the start button).
Despite the obvious convenience of unlimited Internet tariffs, many users are satisfied with plans with prepaid traffic. And most often the reason for this is not their own choice, but the limitation of the technical capabilities of the provider. At the same time, at the end of the month, the question often arises: where to spend traffic? This is especially true if the unused volume simply burns out.
