Not to be underestimated.

When choosing to upgrade or renew a mobile phone contract, there’s one thing you need to give some thought into….

That is the amount of data you envisage using.

Do you regularly get a text from your mobile phone provider saying you’ve nearly run out of data for the month?

A common reaction is ‘but I haven’t used that much!’

Well unfortunately, the way smartphones are designed, you could leave it on standby without ever touching it for a month and still end up using a lot of your data.

How can that be?

As mobile phone programmers are constantly developing newer and improved versions of the apps installed on a smartphone, it will automatically download and install these updates for you; which then eats into the data allowance.

On average these apps can be as much as 250MB in size.

So if you have a stack load of apps on there, the more likely you are to reach your monthly limit.

So how can you avoid this from happening?

Well here’s my 5.1 guide….

1) Remove apps
If you have apps that are never used, then get them off there.

You’re simply wasting away your data allowance every time it downloads a newer update for an app you never click on!

2) Check the app settings
Each app will have a setting to disable data access.

Just turn this off for the one’s you don’t need data access for.

3) Music streaming
If you use Apple Music or Spotify, sync your playlists so you can listen to them offline.

This will prevent it from streaming and downloading the music each time you listen.

4) Wi-Fi only
A good one is to configure your phone to download app updates over Wi-Fi only.

So if you’re out and about, the downloading of new updates will be paused until you reconnect to a Wi-Fi hotspot.

This setting alone will have a massive and positive impact to your data allowance.

5) Turning data off
Another option is to switch the data feature off completely.

Might not be practical in some cases, especially if you’re a regular user of the web or WhatsApp for example.

Using this method means you’re relying solely on a Wi-Fi connection.

5.1) Alert option
Set your phone to notify you by text when you reach a certain limit.

All useful options to help avoid a nasty shock with your next bill.