Your smartphone could be eating into your data usage allowance without you realising. Even when the screen is off, the phone is still working away in the background.
There are two main culprits here:
- Data feeds into your applications
Reduce your email data usage
Changing how often your phone fetches new emails can significantly reduce your data usage. The more often your phone checks (or 'fetches') for emails, the quicker your data allowance disappears.
Here’s how to change that:
iPhone: Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data
Android: Email > Menu > Settings > Server settings
Reduce your data feed usage
You may have a data feed or two running in the background and not realise it. If you're logged into a social media app on your phone, like Facebook or Twitter, then you've got a data feed. Or you may have continual news or weather updates. Basically, anything that gives you real-time updates about something consumes your data.
Similar to email, you need to change how often your phone checks for updates. Here’s how to do that, using Facebook as an example:
iPhone: Settings > Facebook > Background App Refresh (toggle off)
Android: Settings > Connections > Data usage > Mobile data usage > Facebook > Allow background data usage (toggle off)
Check your usage with an app
You can get apps that'll tell you how much data you've used, which could be useful if you're concerned about using your allowance too quickly. Although we can't recommend any particular apps, you might want to check some out on your device’s app provider.
Alternatively, you can use the data usage feature on your phone. Here’s how to access it:
iPhone: Settings > Mobile Data (scroll down to find out which apps are using mobile data)
Android: Settings > Network and Internet > Internet > Settings (tap App data usage for details)
Set up a data spend cap
You can apply a spend cap to any mobile plan purchased on or after 01 October 2018, so you can limit how much you spend on top of your monthly plan. For more information visit BT Business spend caps.