Top 5 Tips for Minimizing Data Usage

As smartphones become essential for social and daily life, phone data usage concerns many. We all want to reduce our data usage to avoid incurring extra fees, improve battery life and have value for the money we pay for data plans. Do you ever dread the text from your carrier about using up all your data? It’s low-key lousy news, right? So, let’s discuss some tips to prevent your phone from using too much data and avoid the dreaded text from your network provider.

1. Use Wi-Fi whenever you can
   Simply put, if you use the Wi-Fi, your phone won’t eat away your wireless data for your internet access. Wi-Fi usually has unlimited internet or costs less than mobile data. Even in Bhutan, many places have free Wi-Fi, such as offices, hotels, airports and coffee shops. So, don’t be shy to ask for the passwords, and use the first 15 seconds to connect with Wi-Fi. Then, you can scroll through Instagram and TikTok without worrying about hitting your data cap. TashiCell has some great offers on 4G and 5G Wi-Fi routers for your home and office, so call today at 7700 to learn more.
   However, take caution in sharing your Wi-Fi passwords. Sharing passwords with people you don’t trust could risk security issues.

2. Avoid downloads and updates on your phone.
   Save the download and updates on your phone until you are connected to Wi-Fi. Updating and downloading use a lot of data, and that’s one reason why you might be hitting that data cap very soon. You can go to the setting on any phone and choose Wi-Fi for all app updates and downloads. iPhone users can also ignore the prompts to update to a new iOS until they are connected to Wi-Fi.

3. Turn off autoplay on your video app.
   In many apps like YouTube, video autoplay options are turned on by default. And many people don’t know that it can be turned off. Imagine the videos playing non-stop while the phone is lying idle. This would be a surefire way to use much of your precious data. To prevent it, on YouTube, go to settings and turn off the autoplay from the option. Similarly, you can do this for other social media apps too.

4. Cancel your apps after using them.
   How often do you close your apps completely? Leaving apps running in the background can still use data and your phone battery, contributing to your worries about over-using data. You don’t have to do it every time you are done using an app, but you’d be surprised how many of them are running in the background. That’s why some social media apps have new content and videos already loaded when you open them. Both Android and iPhone have simple steps to close all your apps.

5. Go for offline GPS maps.
   While travelling, the navigation app is one of the reasons why your phone data are still used up, even though you are barely checking your newsfeeds. They can suck a lot of data. A smart move would be to download the map after you search the location and load all the street names. On Android, you could hit the download in the toolbar. On iPhones, you can see the location saved automatically after you go offline.