[Photo/How to do it Yourself Kenya]
You have had questions about your Safaricom data, and wondered, “Where does it go? How does it go so fast?”
Safaricom has heard you and has done something to improve your data experience.The telecommunication firm has introduced, the 'SWIFT Squad' to help you Take Control of your data.
Below are the tips to manage and save your data:
To keep track of your data usage and ensure your bundles do not expire without using them, you will be receiving proactive data usage notifications as your bundle gets closer to expiry. This will hep you keep using it untill the very last MB.
To monitor your data usage on an Android device, see how much data you have used, follow the given steps, as given by the firm.
Navigate to the Android settings menu. The first section should be Network settings or Wireless and Networks.Under “Network Settings” select the option titled “Mobile data” or “Data usage”.3. Select the dates you want to review using "Data usage cycle". Adjust the bars to determine mobile data consumption for specific days.Select the “Set Mobile Data Limit” box to get notifications from your phone when you exceed your set data usage.Scroll down to monitor each of your installed App’s data consumption.
To stop losing your airtime through bundles auto renewing even when you do not need any, you will decide whether your data bundle should keep renewing or whether you just want to buy the bundle as a one off. You can also choose to stop an auto renewing bundle at any time by selecting the, “Stop auto-renew” option. to do this, dial *544# to choose your bundle.
To control your phone from using your airtime again and again without you noticing, use MyDataManager. It is the easy way to ensure that your airtime is not used to browse when you run out of data bundles. To do this, dial *544#, select MyDataManager, then activate, after which you will receive a confirmation message.
You may as well wonder if Safaricom charges more to watch YouTube videos.
Here, you can save up to 60 per cent data when you choose to watch YouTube videos in Standard quality instead of High Definition. To do this:
Open YouTube and look for the little cog on the bottom right hand side of the video time bar.Click on it for the pop up menu then select Quality.You will have options for everything from 144P to 480P to choose from- but 480p is pretty good balance between clarity and data load.
To save your data on Snapchat: Go to Snapchat Settings; Open “Manage Additional Services”; Select “Travel Mode”.
To stop WhatApp groups from consuming your data, choose which photos and videos you want to see by making sure auto-download is not activated by doing the following:
Go to the “settings” section in your Whatsapp APPChoose “Data and Storage Usage”Select Media Auto Download optionSelect When Using Mobile Data and switch it to “No Media”. You can now enable low data usage for Whatsapp Calls.
For Instagram, you can as well save your data from fast consumption by doing the following: Open Instagram options; Go to Settings; Select Cellular Data Use; Tick Use Less Data.
On Facebook, simply switch off auto-play and choose the videos you want to watch. To do this: Go to your Facebook profile tab; Select Help and Settings; Select AutoPlay; Select Never auto-play Videos.
For Twitter: turn off auto-play so you can choose which videos are worth your MBs, by:
Going to your Twitter Profile iconClick on Settings and PrivacySelect Data Usage, then set Video Autoplay to Never.