Many apps also offer you the option to download data beforehand and cache it on your system. With Spotify, you can download playlists, songs, and full albums to listen later “offline”. Google Maps allows you to save maps in advance so that you can look at them later. To do this, search for an area that you’re interested in having the map for and then type in “Okay Maps” in the search bar. Google Maps will automatically download the map for offline use later.

Restrict Background Data:

In the settings menu, you can find out which apps you have consume the most data both in foreground (as in, when you’re using the app) and background (as in, when it not being used actively). When you click on each app, it’ll break this down in a handy pie chart and you’ll be able to customize the time period in which you want to view data consumption. You can limit background data by checking off “Limit Background Data” at the bottom of the screen when you click on a particular app.

Increase email checking intervals:

Use the settings in the email app to leave it longer between logins. It may not be much if there’s no emails to download but checking in every five minutes may not be essential. Make sure you can also set it not to download attachments automatically therefore ensuring that you only download the attachments that you need to actually read.

Google Account: Check synchronization settings

One of the great things about your having a Google account is being able to synchronize your many Google accounts across many devices and PCs. While this is a gift for many, this may also suck extra data that you’re saving on your mobile device if gone unchecked. In the settings menu of your smartphone, you can specify what exactly you want to be synced with your Google account. For example, you can pick and choose that you want your contacts to be automatically updated across devices, but perhaps, not all the movies in your Google Play Movies or the music in Play Music.

Browser: restrict data usage

Mobile surfing is a great way to pass time on the go, whether you’re waiting for a meeting or on public transit. However, a media intensive site or something not customized for mobile browsing may be pretty data intensive. Browsers such as Google Chrome and Opera offer options to compress data before transmitting it to your device, helping you reduce the amount of data you’re consuming with these browsers.

Data Use Checking:

Check your past usage: The easiest way to check past data usage is to log into the web portal of your cellular provider (or check your paper bills) and look at what your data usage is. If you’re routinely coming in way under your data cap you may wish to contact your provider and see if you can switch to a less expensive data plan. If you’re coming close to the data cap or exceeding it, you will definitely want to keep reading.

Check your recent usage: Checking your old bills is a great way to see your data usage over the previous months/years but it will always lag by a billing cycle. In order to check your current usage you want to monitor consumption from within Android.

If your phone has Android 4.0 or above you can check your usage via the OS. If your phone is not currently running Android 4.0 or above you’ll want to skip down to the next section where we talk about third-party monitoring tools.

Navigate to Settings –> Wireless & Networks –> Data Usage. You’ll see a screen that looks something like the first screen:

Here you can set warnings and limits on mobile data use even for individual apps.

So, these are a few tips and tricks to limit the data consumption on your mobile device but by no means is it an exhaustive list. It is worth checking using the App settings what exactly each app is connecting for and how much data it uses in the background which is costing you money each month unnecessarily.

Third Party Tools:

You could also Check out MyDataManager (free). The app tracks your data usage in real time and offers you a detailed breakdown of how much data each app is hogging. This way, you can identify which apps use the most data. The best feature? Data threshold alerts. MyDataManager lets you set thresholds (like 200MB, 1GB, 2GB, and so on) and get notified whenever you pass a threshold.

Onavo Count is another : Not only is it an improvement over the built-in monitoring provided by Android 4.0+ phones it works on phones with Android versions as low as Android 2.2.

You could also install an ad-blocker, modern ads take up a surprising amount of data. Alternatively a lot of the free apps out there have a facility where you can pay a small fee (0.99) to get the upgrade which reoves the ads altogether.