Getting more out of your Data

As a result of the realities of our present economy, skyrocketing charges on goods and services and the attending limited resources to meet our daily needs, coupled with the fact that we need to keep up to date with events as it break round the world and especially in our country Nigeria we need to learn how to get the most from our data.
Recently you might have noticed that your data get exhausted at an alarming rate than usual, and you wonder how come? Well, its not a news that 95% of Nigerians make use of their phones (smartphones) connected to a telecommunication company as Service provider be it MTNigeria, GLO, Etisalat, Airtel and what have you, and this same companies are subjects of fines from the Federal Government (NCC).
They simply therefore transfer the burden of getting this money to we unsuspecting Nigerians or how do you explain the fact that your 2gb worth of data now burns very fast and you need to renew like twice a month.
In light of all these what can you do to reduce your data consumption so as to at least save you some money other than spending them on incessant data purchase? Below are what you need to know about your smartphone:

1. Your smartphone be it Android, Apple, Blackberry or Windows phone all update themselves even while they are on idle mode.
2. That certain webpage are too heavy to be viewed on your phone except you don’t mind.
3. That most default browser on phone consumes more data.
4. That most Apps like Facebook and co are the chief culprit in data consumption.

Having said all that how do we now reverse this trend?
Even though we cannot entirely stop data from exhausting at least there are things we can do that will help reduce the alarming rate at which they get exhausted, to do this here are few tips to what can be done
If you’re an android user the first thing is to turn off auto update on your phone by following this simple steps:

Play Store>Settings>general>Auto-update Apps>Do not Auto-update Apps.

The next this is to change your default browser from explorer to Opera mini.
You may wonder why opera browser? This is because opera have a good record of data managemment, as it filters streaming automatically or you can enable it when you need it or not.
For those who love to download music and movie online well; as much as I won’t discourage you from doing so but as much as possible reduce download if you have option of collecting from your friends.
*Tip: when downloading and its stopping abruptly don’t even try to select again as either;

• Where you are as little network connectivity, especially when travelling.
• Or the file is not properly uploaded on the page.

Most frequent app used on smartphones are Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in no particular order, to know this if you check your data management section on your phone you will confirm this.

Phone settings>Data usage.

By selecting each installed app it will show you how much data it consumes while you open it and how much it consume when you didn’t open them. To reduce the rate at which some of this app consume is to:

• Open some of them on your browser like Opera except you want to chat on Facebook and don’t have Facebook messenger installed.

Last but not the least is to always make sure you turn off your data when:

• You realised there is little or no connectivity, because why should your data continue to burn when you’re not even enjoying it in the first place.
• When you’re about to go to bed at night.

Hope you find this useful.
Enjoy.