iPhone expert reveals 5 habits that are WASTING your data allowance
Green Smartphones, an eco-friendly phone comparison site, have just published some tips to help iPhone users avoid wasting their 4G/5G mobile data.
With the cost of living on the rise, many people are choosing cheaper phone plans with a lower data limit - I thought your readers at the Devon Daily might be interested in these tips.
Here are some common habits that will waste your data allowance, with quotes courtesy of Tom Paton, founder of greensmartphones.com.
1. Using Facetime too often
Facetime is very popular among iPhone users, but when compared to regular voice calls, it uses a lot of data. If you're not connected to Wi-Fi, you might like to avoid using Facetime to keep in touch with friends and family.
"When using Facetime, your phone has to send and receive two different high-definition video streams at the same time. While Apple's software does a good job at compressing these video streams, if you're often on Facetime when out of the house, you might find that the app uses up huge amounts of data."
To check how much mobile data Facetime calls are consuming, iPhone users can open Facetime, select "Recents", and tap the "i" symbol. This will display the amount of mobile data used by each call, for Facetime calls that used your 4G or 5G connection.
2. Using Wi-Fi Assist
"By default, when your Wi-Fi signal isn't perfect, your iPhone will use your mobile data to try and improve the connection - this is known as Wi-Fi Assist. The problem is, Wi-Fi Assist can use up a lot of data without you realising it, depending on what you're doing online."
"Most of the time, you can safely disable Wi-FI Assist without noticing much of a difference in your internet speeds. If your Wi-Fi isn't great at home, it might be worth investing in a new router, or some Wi-Fi signal boosters, to avoid having to rely on Wi-Fi assist - doing this will also help you get better Wi-Fi signal on other devices."
Wi-Fi Assist can be disabled in Settings > Mobile Data > Wi-Fi Assist.
3. Browsing the web with Safari
Most people use the default web browser, Safari, to browse the web on their iPhone. However, there are different web browsers on the App Store that use less mobile data.
"While Safari does block third-party tracking cookies by default, helping to protect your privacy, it doesn't block web ads from displaying. This means that when you view websites with an excessive number of image and video-based ads, you'll use up a huge amount of mobile data, every single time you load a webpage."
"Rather than using Safari, we recommend using a web browser app that blocks ads from displaying, like Brave Browser. This app prevents websites from showing data-hungry mobile ads, and also blocks tracking cookies, just like Safari."
4. Allowing background data usage
Many iPhone users don't know this, but certain apps can continue to use data in the background, even when you're not using them.
"By default, your iPhone has something called 'Background App Refresh' switched on. Background App Refresh is a setting that allows apps to update their content from the internet when you're not using them. For example, if you open Twitter, and navigate to another app, Twitter will keep your feed updated in the background, so that new Tweets display instantly if you open the app again."
"Depending on the apps you leave open in the background, and how long you leave them open for, Background App Refresh can use up huge amounts of mobile data. We recommend turning it off if you're looking to stop wasting your data allowance."
"With Background App Refresh disabled, you shouldn't notice much of a difference in how apps behave. You'll just have to wait a bit longer for content to load when you re-open an app that was sitting idle in the background."
Background App Refresh can be disabled in Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
5. Playing free mobile games
"From our research, we've found that free mobile games often use up surprisingly large amounts of data. This is because these free games rely on ads to make money, and every time an ad is shown, it must be downloaded from the internet."
"It's always worth checking every so often which mobile games and other apps are using the most mobile data. Using this information, you can find games you might want to uninstall, as well as apps you should be careful to only use when connected to Wi-Fi."
The data usage of each app installed on your iPhone can be viewed in Settings > Mobile Data.
