Mobile internet could be expensive, specially when you buy it on the go. It is more sensible to use it bundled with a contract or with a prepaid data to avoid going over the limit and be charged with skyrocket bill, see photo below.
This bill tells us that the mobile internet charges by the amount of data being used and not by the amount of time spent surfing the internet. Websites are also not the same in the sense of how much information or data is used just for the pages to show. Elements of a site like colour, type of fonts, font decorations, scripts and many more contribute to the data usage. The same with mobile apps. Free apps usually use more data than paid apps because of the presence of dynamic advertisements. All of these contributes to data usage!
How to reduce mobile data usage without modifying the way you surf?
The best way to beat excessive usage charges therefore without compromising your freedom to use the internet to any site you want is to have a data contract that is tailored to your need, if you are a heavy mobile internet addict.
But if you are in an existing contract right now and experienced being overcharged with your internet activity, here are some measures to lessen the amount of data without modifying your surfing habit.
1. Reduce data whilst surfing the web.
Usually when you click or search for anything, the data traffic goes to your internet provider before it is sent to you in a raw form. The amount of data being used is also in its original form as intended by the web developers.
The latest chrome browser has data saver that can help in reducing this amount by compressing it first before it is sent to you, resulting in substantial reduction of the amount of package that is being sent. As a result, you'll use less data and also as an effect the lighter package will load faster.
On chrome, the data saver fucntion is not turned on on default so you need to go to the tool button(1), settings(2), data saver(3), and slide it to on(3).You can save up 10 to 50% of data or more depending on the sites that you visit.
If you have not downloaded it to your mobile, it is available for both Android and iOS.
2. Use opera Max to save data from applications.
The chrome data saver extension is only available when you are using chrome and not when you are using downloaded apps. This is where Opera Max comes in. The same as chrome's data saver extension, Opera Max creates a virtual private network(5) to capture internet traffic whilst you are using mobile internet(6) and compresses this to it's servers before delivering it to your device. This results in reduction of data packets that is being delivered to your browser, downloaded apps, native apps and anything that uses the internet and spend data (7) . You can also manually configure video compression delivery to make it load lighter and faster(8).
Get Opera Max from play store. Unluckily, iOS is not supported.
3. Use Opera Mini for iOS
iOS fans should not feel left out, as they can also use chrome, and also there is Opera Mini browser that is also a good try to save data. It has 2 levels of data compression, the Opera Mini(9) mode, which compresses webpages to their lightest package, and Opera turbo(10) which balances between the compression and the way the website looks like as web masters intended to.The data savings(11) meter shows how much you save by it's compression algorithms.
It is available on both android and iOS!
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