iPhone: The 5 best tips for less data consumption abroad
Mobile data is expensive abroad and is only scarce in flat rates. However, if you reduce the data consumption on your iPhone, you can also go on vacation with just a few megabytes. We give you 5 helpful tips.
Tip 1: Turn off the push messages in the emails
Even if you could probably do without it, mails are usually retrieved on vacation. If the iPhone checks your emails automatically, that goes pretty well in the data volume.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone and select the "Mail, Contacts, Calendar" category below.
- Here, tap on "Data synchronization" and deactivate the "Push" option. The first MByte are already saved.
- If you also select the "Manual" option below, your mails will only be loaded if you open the app yourself.
- Go back one step and also deactivate the option "Load images from web server". If a mail contains pictures, the download will only be started at your command.
Tip 2: Keep an eye on the data volume
- Since May 2016, you have been paying a maximum of 5 cents per MByte abroad. However, an MByte still costs around 20 cents. Foreign flat rates often only offer 50 to 150 MByte.
- Since the already valuable mobile data is used even more economically abroad, you should get a precise overview of your consumption. You can do this in the "Settings" under the "Mobile Network" category.
- Here you can find the current consumption at home and abroad. You can reset the display at the bottom of the menu if you wish. So you always have an eye on your previous consumption.
Tip 3: Activate data roaming only when needed
- You will also find the "Data options" item in the "Mobile network" category. Here you can switch the "data roaming" option on and off as required.
- To prevent your iPhone from loading data in the background, you should always switch off data roaming. If you want to use the mobile network on the iPhone, you can switch the function back on.
Tip 4: Use Opera instead of Safari
- If you surf the web with Safari, all data will be loaded in their original size. While this is quite advantageous in WLAN, it is mobile and, especially abroad, it can lead to high data consumption.
- The Opera Mini browser compresses all website data and images. Tap the Opera logo at the bottom of the app, you'll see the savings Opera has made for you at the top. The "Opera Turbo" saving function has been activated from the start.
- Most of the data volume is lost when surfing through images. In the "Advanced Settings" you can completely deactivate the loading of images or choose a lower quality for images.
Tip 5: Compress data traffic with Onavo
- The free Onavo Extend app goes one step further. All incoming data is routed through the Onavo servers and compressed for you.
- A VPN connection is required for this. After the one-time setup, you can save many MBytes. The service is not required in WLAN and switches off automatically.
In the next article we will give you all the information about the data consumption of WhatsApp abroad.