6 WAYS TO CONSERVE YOUR PHONE DATA

Today, we’re consuming more and more content through our phones. But as we all know, phone data plans don’t come cheap. How many times have we looked at our bills and wondered where all that data had gone? Here are some tips on how to save your phone from data shocks.
Data is the modern day’s most valuable currency. Whether it’s on the phone or the computer, we’ve become constant consumers of content of all kinds: text, video and music. And all this data comes to us via the internet, where everything exists in one massive swirl of zeroes and ones. Here are a few ways in which to conserve your phone data so that you can make more use of less.
1. Sync all of your music
Whatever music app you use, make sure that you sync all the content to your offline repository so that you can listen to music offline as well. If you don’t do this, every time you listen to a new track online, it will burn through your data. Make it a habit to sync all your playlists whenever you’re connected to the wifi so that your data bill doesn’t end up being one big bomb at the end of the month.
2. Play Youtube at low res
Did you know that Youtube automatically ‘chooses’ for you which resolution you should watch videos in, depending on the speed of your internet? Why not take the choice into your own hands and choose to watch videos in low resolution? Sure, there are some videos that you need to watch in hi-def (like the trailers of the latest sci-fi movies), but that jumping cat is going to jump just as high in low resolution as well. Better still, change your Youtube default settings so that every video first opens in low resolution.
3. Take screenshot of map data
Google Maps is a data-thirsty behemoth. Every time you search for a location and get directions for it from your house, you eat up data. So make it a habit to search for locations from home, before you leave, so that you can take a screenshot of the directions and refer to it whenever you want. That way, you conserve your phone data by being just a little foresighted. Also, it helps a lot in the way of stress levels to be prepared rather to pull out your phone while you’re driving to search for the place that should have been ‘just here somewhere’.
4. Disable auto-play
These days, Facebook and Instagram come with an auto-play feature. Unless you have your earphones on and speakers turned up, you don’t know that a video is playing in the background somewhere up your wall. Watching videos is bad enough on data; now what about videos that you don’t even get to watch? Find the auto-play option on your Facebook and make double sure that it is turned off. Many large data plans have found themselves vanquished by the humble auto-play. Don’t let it do the same to your phone.
5. Download content to read offline
Just like you can play videos offline, you can also download content offline and keep it aside for a later reading. Much of the content consumption today happens on phones, but with a little bit of foresight, you can download all the content you need when you’re home, on your wifi, and save them to an offline location on your phone. That way, you have your content, and your phone data plan is also secretly thanking you.
6. Turn off background app refresh
The default setting for most apps is to automatically look for updates online and get them without asking permission from you, in the background. This can be helpful in some occasions, but in most cases, you’re better off turning off this function because each time an app connects to the internet and ‘checks for updates’, it’s eating up your precious data. So have app updates scheduled over your home wifi, and do it manually.