My Tips on a Limited Cellular Data Plan

At home, I have an unlimited cellular data plan for my phone - I took this for granted until I traveled and had a cellular data plan with limited data.

This is when I learned the reality of paying for every gigabyte of data transferred on the cellular phone plan - data management is key!

The amount of data transferred when I was not consciously using my phone surprised me. I learned quickly which apps or systems used data.

These tips help when you have a “WiFi base” - a place where you can connect to WiFi and use more data. Otherwise, you are kind of stuck using all the data over the cellular plan.

Before starting - always reset the internal data usage counter so you get accurate usage.

Data Hogs

Two iPhone apps I found that use data:

• Photos
• App Store

Photos make sense - you take a photo and the system backs it up to iCloud. Doing this on WiFi is better than on the cellular plan, especially for videos, long videos!

App Store - this puzzled me. WHY?! Like there was 500MB transferred the moment I made a local connection. Was it to get local versions of apps? I didn’t notice a difference in any of my apps. I am guessing the data transfer is advertising related… 😒

Low Data Mode

Another setting one can use to reduce data usage: Low Data Mode.

This is a setting to tell the phone to use less data while on cellular connection.

There is a trade off: to use less data, the phone will connect less to data services. One of these services is messaging. If you are expecting a message, expect delays, because the phone will be checking for new messages less frequently.

Personal Hotspots

When you connect other devices to your phone as a personal hotspot, make sure to set those device’s data usage to low!

As far as those other devices know - the connection is an Internet connection and will treat it as such - including using all the data it needs for its system processes… like backing itself up!

Conclusion

Traveling without unlimited Internet data presents challenges not seen when you have an unlimited Internet data plan.

Turning off data backups, reducing data usage, and settings on connecting devices as a peronsal hotspot while on cellular data all help reduce surprising charges on a limited cellular data plan.