How Could You Reduce Your iPhone Internet Data Usage?
David is using his iPhone extensively as a result of which he ends up exceeding his monthly limit. Naturally, David is wondering what he could do in order to reduce internet data usage on his iPhone and thus reduce his monthly usage costs.
There are several different things that could be done. At the end you need to list them in order of importance. It might not be possible to implement all of them as some of your phone’s functions really matter to you whereas others do not matter as much.
Of course, things that matter to David may not matter to you and vice versa. Nevertheless, David’s example will show you the path towards reduction of your internet data usage.
One of the things you might do is disable or turn off Cellular Data Usage for iCloud. However David doesn’t want to do that. Why? Well, he uses iCloud extensively to transfer files or documents from his phone.
The second thing you might want to do is disable Automatic Downloads on Cellular Data and this is what David has decided to do. He did it as he very well knows that App downloads are some of the biggest files on his device. He will make sure that he is first connected to Wi-Fi before he starts downloading and updating his apps.
David knows that he should disable Wi-Fi Assist as Wi-Fi Assist uses Cellular Data while trying to supplement a weak Wi-Fi signal. David does not see the need for that. He will simply not use Wi-Fi if the signal is too weak.
Next remedy you might want to consider is monitoring or disabling data hungry apps. David knows that he may need some of those apps so he decides to find out how many of them (if not all) even need access to cellular data. He does this by checking the amount of cellular data used by his apps for the period since he has reset them.
A wise thing to do also is to use Per-App Options as different apps include their own options for controlling when cellular data is used which is what David does.
David also thinks that it is wise to disable Background App Refresh (usually disabled to save on battery life but you should check it anyways) as apps updating in the background consume data. He is aware of the fact that disabling them will not really affect his interaction with his phone.
David really likes listening to the music but he also knows that streaming high quality music consumes cellular data. The higher the quality, the larger the file. He decides to stream over Wi-Fi only.
David also wants to disable Autoplay Videos on Cellular Network as he is aware that more people are sharing videos on Facebook and Twitter at the cost of his cellular data.
David has also disabled Mail, Contacts and Calendar Sync options because he wants to get new emails and other data manually without having to use his cellular data. He has reduced Web Browser Data Usage by using a browser with a built-in data compression proxy. He also cached some of his favorite music, video, maps and article files in order to use them offline.
It is the recommendation of Mission Repair Centre that once you have reached your monthly limit and do not wish to exceed it you should avoid using cellular data completely. Nice feature of non-Wi-Fi applications such as ESPN is that they will not even load without cellular data being turned off so you can always use them if you have reached your data usage limit for the given month.
Darius Romanek
Mission Repair Centre Team 🙂
