6 awesome tips for cheaper roaming abroad

Going abroad on holiday? Then make sure you’re not caught out by extortionate roaming bills when checking e-mails, sharing your photos on social media or searching for the best-rated restaurants nearby!

We’ve done the hard work on cheaper roaming for you, so you can browse without breaking the bank….

1. Find roaming offers
   

   Before leaving for the airport, check with your mobile provider to see if they offer international roaming packages, which can give you huge data savings. When you touch down at your holiday destination, actually take time to read the welcome SMS from the mobile operator carefully. It will outline the costs for calls, SMS and web data during your stay.

2. Switch to a browser that shrinks down webpages.

   If you load fewer megabytes, you can save money, plus browse faster when you have poor reception. The Opera Mini mobile browser can crunch down webpages to as tiny as 10% of their original size, plus its data counter shows how many megabytes you’ve saved. Browsers that shrink data are also handy on slow, crowded Wi-Fi zones, like airports and cafes.

3. Turn off data thieves.
   

   Turn off notifications and background data. Statistics show that 30% of your mobile data wasted in the background while apps are not in use.

4. Pause synchronizing.
   

   If you’ve set up Dropbox, Facebook or Google Drive to automatically upload your holiday photos from your phone, disable this syncing in the settings to squash down data consumption. Alternatively, adjust your settings so that your holiday pics upload only when you are connected to Wi-Fi.

5. Compress data across your phone!
   

   Try a data-savings app like Opera Max that will shrink data, images and videos across most apps on your phone. Also, Opera Max tells you which apps consume excessive amount of background data. It lets you block particular apps from using mobile data and restricts them to using Wi-Fi only.

6. Prepare yourself by pre-loading

   You already prepare your music playlists and movies for your travels, so why not pre-load your webpages? Some browsers, like Opera Mini, have a feature that enables you to save an internet page for offline use, so that you can read it later without activating roaming or finding Wi-Fi.