How to save mobile Internet. Saving Internet traffic on a smartphone
Long gone are the days when providers kept track of megabytes spent by users on the Internet. Tariff plans for home Internet these days differ mainly in speed. But cellular operators are in no hurry to provide full unlimited internet and, as a rule, allocate only a certain amount of traffic.
But today not only people, but also smartphones themselves cannot live without the Internet: it happens that he himself downloads something in the middle of the night, updates a couple of applications, and in the morning there is no time left to download attachments from mail. Well, let's think about how we can deal with this and how to save on mobile Internet.
1. Disable automatic app updates
The first thing to do is turn off automatic software updates. Many applications download updates in the background, meaning you may not even know about it. Allow updates only to those that you really need on a regular basis. You can do this on iOS in the “Settings – General – Content Update” section.
Android owners need to go to the “Settings – Data transfer – Operator” section. You can also see in detail which application consumes how much over a selected period of time. When you click on each of them, detailed settings for a specific program open. We need to “Limit background traffic”, and if you wish, you can disable auto-updating of data.
2. Set a traffic limit
To control Internet traffic consumption, set the required limit in accordance with your tariff plan or option directly on your smartphone. On iOS, just download a third-party application from the App Store. The free Traffic Monitor utility is just one of these. On Android, you can limit data transfer as follows: go to “Settings – Data usage – Set limit”.
3. Refuse synchronization
Regardless of which network you access the Internet on - 4G/ LTE, 3G or EDGE/ 2G, the smartphone regularly synchronizes available applications with remote servers. In order to avoid this and, accordingly, save money, you just need to disable such synchronization. On iOS, this can be done in two steps: first go to “Settings - iCloud - iCloud Drive - turn off Cellular Data”, then to “Settings - iTunes Store and App Store - turn off Cellular Data”. On Android, just go to “System settings – Accounts – Turn off synchronization / Only via Wi-Fi”
4. Disable widgets
Many smartphone users install widgets. Statistics show that a one-time Internet surfing in a browser consumes significantly less traffic compared to requests from a widget that requires uninterrupted connection to the Internet.
5. Load data in advance
Navigation applications Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Navigator and Google Maps can actually work offline. You just need to download the maps first. In Yandex, this is done like this: “Yandex.Maps – Menu – Loading maps – Moscow – Downloading.” And in Google it’s like this: “Google Maps – Menu – Your places – Download map area – Select map – Download.”
Cellular networks provide faster and faster access to the World Wide Web, and traffic consumption by mobile devices is only growing. However mobile internet is still not a cheap pleasure: many people still use tariffs with 4 GB of traffic, and many people travel, and the Internet while traveling is much more expensive.
In this article we'll look at seven ways to save money. mobile traffic, from the simplest ones, available in the Android settings, to means of compressing transmitted data, a complete ban on data transfer and completely unobvious approaches, such as installing an ad blocker.
1. Standard Android tools
Some simple steps will help reduce the amount of data transferred.
- Go to the Play Store settings and in the “Auto-update applications” option, select “Never”. Uncheck the box next to “Availability of updates”.
- Go to Settings → Location and turn off Location History.
- “Settings → Accounts”, “Menu” button, uncheck “Auto-sync data”. Internet usage will decrease noticeably, but mail and application notifications will stop coming.
- Now go back to settings and go to “Data Transfer”. Press "Menu" and select "Limit background activity." As a result, the battery life of the smartphone will increase and Internet consumption will decrease, but notifications from instant messengers will no longer be received. Therefore more the right decision will go through the list, find not very important applications and limit their access to background data and/or data on cellular networks.
- Open Google Settings and go to Security. I don’t recommend disabling “Check for security problems,” but unchecking the “Anti-malware” checkbox would be the right decision. At your own peril and risk, you can disable “Remote device search” and “Remote blocking”.
- In the same “Google Settings”, go to “Data Management” (at the bottom of the list) and set “Application Data Update” to “Wi-Fi Only”.
- Go back and open Search & Google Now. Go to the “Personal Data” section and turn off “Send statistics”. In the menu “Voice search → Offline speech recognition”, download the package for offline recognition and disable its auto-update or select “Only via Wi-Fi”. You can also go to the “Feed” section and turn it off. The Ribbon is the left screen of the Google Start or home screen of the Google app. Here you can disable “Screen Search” (Google Now on tap). Well, at the very bottom, turn off the “Recommended applications” item.
- Don’t forget to turn off auto-checking and auto-downloading updates in “Settings → About phone.”
2. Get rid of advertising
Oddly enough, one way to reduce traffic consumption is to block ads. The indispensable program AdAway will help with this. It completely denies access to ad servers, blocking it at the system level. In other words, when an application accesses an address that is in its database, the request goes nowhere. By the way, activity tracking services (those that monitor user actions) are also blocked. The application requires root permissions (and S-OFF on HTC) to run.
When the blocking is enabled, problems may arise with the operation of some applications for making money from advertising (for example, NewApp, AdvertApp, CoinsUP - the latter did not show anything at all until recently). Other incompatibilities are also possible: six months ago, the Weather Underground application did not work due to AdAway. IN latest versions everything was fine (either Weather Underground changed something, or AdAway corrected the host addresses).
3. Save using your browser
There are not so many browsers with a built-in data saving mode. I selected five and tested them by opening seven web pages.
Firefox
Used for benchmark testing. There is no saving mode here.
Consumption: 13.33 MB
Opera Mini
The most economical browser. Allows you to save up to 90% of traffic (on average up to 70–80%). The data is compressed so much that you can browse the Internet on Edge or even GPRS networks. This all works by using its own engine, which represents web pages not as text, but as binary code. And Opera servers are responsible for converting pages into this code. Plus a built-in ad blocker, video and image compression.
There is also a super-saving mode, which includes aggressive compression methods, which in some cases break pages. For example, the Eldorado store website did not open at all in this mode, YouTube opened in the WAP version, the map could not be viewed on the OpenStreetMap website, and article c opened with distortions. With the super economy mode turned off, these problems disappear.
Consumption: 12 MB
Opera
It differs from the Mini version in a different interface and the absence of a super saving mode. But it works faster.
Consumption: 12.15 MB
Chrome
This browser also has a data saver, but no ad blocker. According to the developers, savings average 20–40% depending on the content. But in practice, in almost a month I saved as much as 4%.
To activate, you need to go to settings and enable the “Traffic saving” item. There are no settings, statistics on saved megabytes can only be assessed by traffic, there are no statistics on sites, there is no ad blocker and support for extensions (for installing the blocker).
The saving mode itself works completely unnoticed. The quality of the pictures does not suffer, and the page loading speed remains almost unchanged. That is, Chrome remains one of the fastest browsers. And he turned out to be the most gluttonous.
Consumption: 15.5 MB
Puffin
Desktop versions of YouTube and Play Store sites opened instead of mobile ones. But the savings are obvious.
Consumption: 5 MB
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Internet surfing speed regularly drops, the Internet slows down, and instead of LTE or at least 3G speed you get a GPRS connection? To enjoy the Internet included in your tariff plan for as long as possible, use our tips.
1. Check where your traffic is going
Anyone whose Internet speed drops dramatically after two weeks of use either has an unprofitable data plan or several hidden data consumers on their smartphone. To save your traffic, you need to first check that none of the apps are using data without your knowledge.
IN iOS you can do this in "Settings" mobile network. If among them there are applications that you do not use, but which consume mobile traffic, then disable them.
Users Android can check the Data Consumption or Data Usage menu in Settings. Set thresholds for the first warning or stopping data usage completely.
2. Don't fall into the system's traps
Smartphone manufacturers live in a different world. They don't seem to be interested in users who want to save some bandwidth. Example: When updating to iOS 9, Apple introduced a new feature called WLAN Assist. When Wi-Fi reception is poor, iPhone switches to a fast mobile connection if one is available. Problem: Users think they have turned on WLAN, but in fact the smartphone is using mobile data, using up precious GB.
WLAN Assist can be disabled in Settings under Mobile Network. In the App and iTunes Store, iPhone users should also disable the "Use mobile data" menu option, otherwise updates will also be downloaded through the mobile connection.
3. Avoid decoy apps
If you took note of our first tip, you've probably already found apps that consume a lot of data. Typically, such programs can be removed or disabled. But what about the apps you use? Watching the loss of mobile traffic?
Typical consumers are a variety of instant messengers: WhatsApp, Instagram, and other VKontakte. In WhatsApp settings there is a section “Data and storage” - “Auto download media”. Here you can specify whether the application will download videos, photos and audio files. Our advice: download videos only via WLAN. We talked in detail about how to disable auto-downloading of files from WhatsApp.
On Facebook, background updates often transfer large amounts of data. In the settings you can simply disable such updates. App stores are also prone to surprises, especially if you've set your settings to allow app updates to be available over the mobile network. It is better to leave the update exclusively via Wi-Fi.
Automatic copying of files to the cloud can also be easily configured. Set the backup behavior so that data is only downloaded using an existing WLAN connection.
4. Use offline apps
If you're finally in the spirit of saving, we recommend using apps that work offline. For example, instead of using streaming music services, save your favorite tracks to your phone and download offline maps to Google Maps - we told you how this works.
5. Enable data compression in your browser
If you frequently use the mobile Internet, enable additional data compression in your browser. In this case, all data is first passed through proxy servers and delivered already compressed, which saves your traffic. For example, Google Chrome and Opera Max use this compression by default.
Fortunately, today there is large selection tariff plans with virtually unlimited Internet. So, in theory, many users may not worry about saving mobile traffic. If even with our advice you do not have enough mobile data, consider changing your tariff or operator.
More savings:
Photo: manufacturing companies, pixabay.com
Cellular networks provide faster and faster access to the World Wide Web, and traffic consumption by mobile devices is only growing. However, mobile Internet is still not a cheap pleasure: many people still use tariffs with a traffic volume of 4 GB, and many people travel, and the Internet while traveling is much more expensive.
In this article, we will look at seven ways to save mobile traffic, from the simplest ones available in the Android settings, to means of compressing transmitted data, a complete ban on data transfer, and completely unobvious approaches, such as installing an ad blocker.
1. Standard Android tools
A few simple steps can help reduce the amount of data transferred.
- Go to the Play Store settings and in the “Auto-update applications” option, select “Never”. Uncheck the box next to “Availability of updates”.
- Go to Settings → Location and turn off Location History.
- “Settings → Accounts”, “Menu” button, uncheck “Auto-sync data”. Internet usage will decrease noticeably, but mail and application notifications will stop coming.
- Now go back to settings and go to “Data Transfer”. Press "Menu" and select "Limit background activity." As a result, the battery life of the smartphone will increase and Internet consumption will decrease, but notifications from instant messengers will no longer be received. Therefore, a better solution would be to go through the list, find not very important applications and limit their access to background data and/or data on cellular networks.
- Open Google Settings and go to Security. I don’t recommend disabling “Check for security problems,” but unchecking the “Anti-malware” checkbox would be the right decision. At your own peril and risk, you can disable “Remote device search” and “Remote blocking”.
- In the same “Google Settings”, go to “Data Management” (at the bottom of the list) and set “Application Data Update” to “Wi-Fi Only”.
- Go back and open Search & Google Now. Go to the “Personal Data” section and turn off “Send statistics”. In the menu “Voice search → Offline speech recognition”, download the package for offline recognition and disable its auto-update or select “Only via Wi-Fi”. You can also go to the “Feed” section and turn it off. The Ribbon is the left screen of the Google Start or home screen of the Google app. Here you can disable “Screen Search” (Google Now on tap). Well, at the very bottom, turn off the “Recommended applications” item.
- Don’t forget to turn off auto-checking and auto-downloading updates in “Settings → About phone.”
2. Get rid of advertising
Oddly enough, one way to reduce traffic consumption is to block ads. The indispensable AdAway program will help with this. It completely denies access to ad servers, blocking it at the system level. In other words, when an application accesses an address that is in its database, the request goes nowhere. By the way, activity tracking services (those that monitor user actions) are also blocked. The application requires root permissions (and S-OFF on HTC) to run.
When the blocking is enabled, problems may arise with the operation of some applications for making money from advertising (for example, NewApp, AdvertApp, CoinsUP - the latter did not show anything at all until recently). Other incompatibilities are also possible: six months ago, the Weather Underground application did not work due to AdAway. In the latest versions, everything has become ok (either Weather Underground changed something, or AdAway corrected the host addresses).
3. Saving using your browser
There are not so many browsers with a built-in data saving mode. I selected five and tested them by opening seven web pages.
Firefox
Used for benchmark testing. There is no saving mode here.
Consumption: 13.33 MB
Opera Mini
The most economical browser. Allows you to save up to 90% of traffic (on average up to 70–80%). The data is compressed so much that you can browse the Internet on Edge or even GPRS networks. It all works by using its own engine, which represents web pages not as text, but as binary code. And Opera servers are responsible for converting pages into this code. Plus a built-in ad blocker, video and image compression.
There is also a super-saving mode, which includes aggressive compression methods, which in some cases break pages. For example, the Eldorado store website did not open at all in this mode, YouTube opened in the WAP version, the map could not be viewed on the OpenStreetMap website, and the article from xakep.ru opened with distortions. With the super economy mode turned off, these problems disappear.
Consumption: 12 MB
Opera
It differs from the Mini version in a different interface and the absence of a super saving mode. But it works faster.
Consumption: 12.15 MB
Chrome
This browser also has a data saver, but no ad blocker. According to the developers, savings average 20–40% depending on the content. But in practice, in almost a month I saved as much as 4%.
To activate, you need to go to settings and enable the “Traffic saving” item. There are no settings, statistics on saved megabytes can only be assessed by traffic, there are no statistics on sites, there is no ad blocker and support for extensions (for installing the blocker).
The saving mode itself works completely unnoticed. The quality of the pictures does not suffer, and the page loading speed remains almost unchanged. That is, Chrome remains one of the fastest browsers. And he turned out to be the most gluttonous.
Consumption: 15.5 MB
Puffin
Desktop versions of YouTube and Play Store sites opened instead of mobile ones. But the savings are obvious.
Consumption: 5 MB
4. Lazy reading services
Pocket lets you save articles to read “for later.” And he has interesting property, which will help save traffic. When adding an article (no matter from a PC or mobile device), if there is a Wi-Fi connection, it is immediately downloaded to the device and becomes available for reading offline. Only the text and images from the article are saved, and all other garbage is deleted, and it becomes possible to change the font size and background.
Pocket has a competitor - Instapaper. In terms of functionality and quality of work, it is almost identical.
5. Auto-sync files over Wi-Fi
If you often use Dropbox and other services to access your files from your smartphone, pay attention to
FolderSync. It can synchronize selected folders with a smartphone immediately when files are changed and only when connected to Wi-Fi. So you never have to download files to your smartphone over the mobile network if you forgot to do it while at home.
6. Completely disconnect applications from the Internet
AFWall+ allows you to disconnect selected applications from the Internet. You can unlink both installed applications and system services, such as ADB. Unlike the built-in restrictor in Android, AFWall blocks access not only in the background, but also in the active mode. You can also use it to give Internet access to only one application in the system. This feature will certainly appeal to users who pay per megabyte (hello, roaming!).
In CyanogenMod 13, you can restrict network access through “Settings → Privacy → Protected Mode.” This feature has not yet been added to CM 14.1.
AFWall+: A True Firewall for Android 7. Data compressors
The market has several very unique applications. They create a VPN tunnel, compressing traffic along the way. Two striking examples: Opera Max and Onavo Extend. Their developers promise up to 50% savings. But we won’t take their word for it and will conduct our own test.
So, the amount of transmitted traffic without savers:
- Websites: 14.62 MB (five pieces)
- YouTube 173 MB (1080p video)
The changes became noticeable immediately: the time it took to open sites increased due to some pause after clicking on a link. And the pages themselves began to load a little longer. The video on YouTube (more precisely, the advertisement before it) took a very long time to load. Moreover, the download speed was almost zero. But what’s most interesting is that Opera Max itself consumed 12.5 MB.
- Websites: 11.59 MB
- YouTube 3 MB (video did not start)
Onavo Extend
The situation here is almost the same. Everything became slower, although not as much as in the case of Opera. And the video started without problems in 1080p. Total:
- Websites: 14.73 MB
- YouTube 171 MB
We track and control internet consumption
The standard traffic manager in Android (Settings → Data transfer) is very convenient and quite functional. For most users who use tariffs with a monthly Internet limit, this will be enough. However, I recommend that others use the analogue from the Play Store. Yes, and third-party applications show much more useful information. - Xposed module showing data transfer speed. It can be perfectly customized and consumes virtually no battery power.
Are unlimited tariffs so unlimited?
The line of postpaid tariffs “Everything” from Beeline, “Unlimited Black” from Tele2, “Smart Unlimited” from MTS and some other tariffs, according to the operator, offer full-fledged unlimited Internet on a smartphone. Is it possible to blindly believe these loud promises? Is everything really so rosy and the Internet will soon become completely free?
It's actually not that simple. Everyone knows about restrictions on torrents and using a smartphone as an access point, and in addition, often after reaching a certain amount of data received, the speed is limited.
As a study of many forums has shown, almost all operators with so-called unlimited speeds reduce the speed after reaching 30 GB in 3G networks (up to 512 Kbps), and in 4G it’s different for everyone. However, people downloaded 700 GB per month (you have to try...) from some companies without cutting the speed.
The author on Tele2 used about 170 GB of 4G Internet last month and there were no restrictions. And after reaching the 100 GB threshold, almost any operator will probably begin to analyze your traffic and apply restriction methods if you use the Internet too intensively. Long questions and pestering of the operator really confirmed this: “When a subscriber creates a large load on the network, the speed may be limited until the day the statistics on the server are reset.” But they seem to have an honest unlimited limit.
Conclusion
As you have already seen, the most effective way save traffic - buy a more expensive tariff. And all super compressors not only degrade the quality and make the Internet more sluggish, but they also don’t always save as much as possible. But if there is no way out, then they will help you save something.
Last updated by at February 9, 2017.
Traffic Saver is an extension for the Google Chrome browser to reduce traffic consumption while loading pages on the Internet. The Data Saver extension was developed by Google.
While the extension is running, data is compressed on Google servers and then loaded into the browser. Thanks to this, traffic is saved and web pages open faster because they have been compressed. The display of pages in the browser does not change due to compression; you see sites as they really are.
The Traffic Saving Chrome extension does not work on the secure HTTPS protocol and in incognito mode, so traffic during such a connection is not compressed, data exchange occurs as usual.
The Traffic Saving extension allows you to bypass blocking of sites on the Internet, since traffic does not pass directly, but through Google servers.
A similar traffic compression function works on devices running operating system Android.
The extension to reduce traffic is especially relevant for mobile Internet users, since “unlimited” tariffs are unlimited only in name. In this case, the Data Saver extension in Google Chrome will slightly reduce traffic consumption while surfing the Internet.
The Data Saver extension can be installed in other browsers based on Chrome. In browsers Yandex.Browser, Amigo and the like, the extension is installed directly from the Chrome store.
To install the Data Saver extension in the Google Chrome browser, go to the Chrome Web Store. In the Chrome store, in the search field, enter the expression: “traffic saving”. Among the extensions found, select the Data Saving extension. Agree to install the extension in your browser.
You can immediately go to the Data Saver extension page using a direct link:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/data-saver/
Extension operation Traffic saving
After installing the extension in the Google Chrome browser, you will see that Traffic Saving works. The extension does not require additional settings.
After some time, you can view data on traffic consumption. To do this, left-click on the extension icon.
After this, a graph with data on traffic consumption will open. For example, in my case, within a day, thanks to the Traffic Saving extension, the total traffic savings amounted to about 10%. Agree that this is not bad at all.
Click on the “More details” link for detailed information. Information is provided for a certain period of time: per hour, 3 hours, 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 60 days. At the top there is a graph, and below you can see statistics on traffic consumption on specific sites.
When studying statistics, you should keep in mind that the extension takes into account all traffic, including that which it does not compress on sites that use the secure HTTPS protocol, for example, on the site www.google.ru.
How to disable the Data Saver extension
Conclusions of the article
The Traffic Saving extension for the Google Chrome browser (Yandex.Browser, Amigo, etc.) allows you to save traffic consumption when visiting sites on the Internet.
I use the Data Saving extension on my computer in browsers based on Chrome, although I have unlimited wired Internet. On the computers of children who use the mobile Internet, I install the Traffic Saving extension without fail.
Extension Saving traffic (video)
