Facetime, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Skype have all revolutionised the way we communicate, whether that is with family and friends or business video conference across the world. We have moved away from costly international telephone calls but are we appreciating the true cost of higher data usage bills instead?
Many people are surprised to discover that the amount of data used on video calling varies depending on which apps are used. Apple’s Facetime is typically found to use the least data but may not always be a viable option as you can only call fellow Apple users.
Video calling on Facetime using your mobile data plan will use approximately 130mb to 180mb per hour, depending on your version of iOS. If you keep your iOS updated your data usage will be towards the lower figure, however you should always keep up to date with the latest iOS news as this may change in the future.
It is possible to restrict your ability to make and receive Facetime calls when there is no Wi-Fi connection in order to avoid excess data usage. Go to Settings, then Mobile Data, scroll to Facetime and use the slider to turn mobile data off.
Whatsapp video calls have been found to use the most data in independent tests, approximately 25mb for a 5 minute video call can be expected. This adds up to 300mb after an hour of video calls – approximately double the amount used by Facetime.
To reduce Whatsapp call data usage go to Settings, Data and Storage Usage and under Call Settings select ‘Low Data Usage’. This may affect your video call quality.
A Facebook Messenger call can be one of the most convenient ways to reach your Facebook contacts. Data usage for an hour of calls is approximately 260mb. Again, it is important to take measures to reduce your data usage during Facebook Messenger calls by making sure that you are on a wifi connection where possible.
Skype app-to-app video calls use approximately 225mb for an hour of calls, slightly less than Facebook and Whatsapp calls.
If video quality isn’t important for your call you can reduce the amount of data used during video calls by reducing the video call quality in your Skype app settings.
Although data usage for video calls can be small for the short 5-10 minute calls here and there, this can quickly add up if the calls become longer and more regular. Look at the data usage for a video call against your overall data usage limit for the month to work out how many calls you can comfortably conduct over your mobile data, don’t forget to take into account your normal day-to-day data usage.
You can save your mobile data by having as many of your calls as possible via a Wi-Fi connection and ensuring that your apps are all optimised for data-saving.
If you are a frequent user of video calling apps you may benefit from the Apps2Data service. By monitoring data usage throughout the day you can pinpoint any particular calls which were heavy on data and be aware of this in future.
With an overall picture of your, or your business data usage throughout the month, Apps2Data puts you back in control.
Whatsapp has now become one of the most popular messaging apps ever to exist. The app has just about every feature you’d expect from a modern-day messaging app, including internet-based voice and video calls.
However, we’re not always connected to Wi=Fi, and as we all know, video calls can be first-degree data hogs. If you’re out and about and low on mobile data, making a video call might make you a bit uncomfortable because it’s highly likely that you’ll run out of data.
Another case is when you’ve already run out of data, and now your internet speeds are slower than a sloth. In such cases, reducing the data usage that Whatsapp video calls put on your connection’s bandwidth can not only help you save data but also might help you have stable video calls when you’re already exhausted your daily data limit.
In this article, we’re going over a few simple steps using which you can drastically reduce just how much data your Whatsapp video calls use.
Also read: WhatsApp vs Signal vs Telegram: Which one is the most secure?
It’s tough to put an accurate number on how much data does a video call exactly use. However, on a 4G network, a Whatsapp video call uses somewhere between 800KB to 1MB of data per minute on average.
After turning the data saver on, you can expect this usage to drop down to around 400-700KB per minute
Also read: How to fix ‘Waiting for this message’ error on WhatsApp?
Note that these steps will also apply to Whatsapp voice calls, meaning you’ll be able to save data on those as well. Open the app on your device and follow the steps mentioned below to reduce data usage during Whatsapp video calls.
You can also consider turning off mobile data or downloading Whatsapp media only over WiFi to save more data.
Also read: How to use WhatsApp on Samsung Galaxy smartwatches?
Yadullah Abidi
Someone who writes/edits/shoots/hosts all things tech and when he’s not, streams himself racing virtual cars. You can reach out to Yadullah at [email protected], or follow him on Instagram or Twitter.
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It would seem that messengers are not the applications that require a lot of Internet.
In fact, it all depends on how actively and how to use them. Under certain conditions, even on WhatsApp, you can effortlessly spend about ten gigabytes per month. With a limited internet package, it would be nice to know how much traffic WhatsApp consumes in general and how to save it wisely. Let's look into this issue.
First, let's talk about how much WhatsApp consumes while running in the background. This is just 1 MB of traffic per day. Then there are text messages, each character sent consumes 1.6 bytes. That is, 1 MB of traffic is enough for 655360 characters in correspondence, and this is not the volume of the smallest book novel.
Voice messages are "heavier" in order, one such message per minute will require 160 Kb of traffic, and for 1 MB it will be possible to record messages for 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Audio calls consume even more - 350 KB per minute of conversation. But they are still far from video communication - 6.7 MB per minute.
Files carry the biggest load. Sending documents, photos or videos takes the lion's share of traffic. This is despite the fact that WhatsApp compresses images and videos by default, degrading their quality but reducing their weight.
It is worth mentioning two more sources that consume the Internet. The first is backup. It allows you to restore correspondence and files attached to them when you reinstall the messenger. Perhaps this is due to sending all the contents of your WhatsApp account to the cloud storage. Naturally, this consumes traffic, the amount of which depends on the volume of files and messages. The second is the automatic update of the messenger, the size of updates can be either very tiny or reach tens of megabytes.
If your Internet is very limited and WhatsApp consumes too much, then you can resort to the following steps to reduce Internet consumption:
In any case, you will convey the necessary information, and you will spend much less traffic.
Topic: 7 most useful Whatsapp chips that few people know about
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CONTENTS
1 Calling costs WhatsApp is a service designed to communicate in a variety of formats. Subscribers can talk in real time using the smartphone's camera and microphone, as well as send text and multimedia content to each other. Already in 2016, the messenger became completely free. Service subscribers pay only the Internet service provider. Knowing the approximate traffic consumption, the user can minimize the cost of communication by correctly distributing priorities. This is especially important if the subscriber uses a tariff plan, the rates of which depend on the number of megabytes transferred. How much traffic does WhatsApp consume next.
Internet usage while the application is running is distributed as follows:
Communication with a picture requires more internet consumption. A minute of conversation without including an image uses 350 kilobytes, a similar conversation time with a picture is about 6.6 megabytes. One hour of video conversation corresponds to 400 MB transfer.
Mobile devices contain built-in utilities for calculating network connection costs.
Access to the option depends on the platform on which the smartphone is running. Most often, the information is located inside the options menu, in the "Connections" section. The name of the option varies: "Data usage", "Traffic monitoring", "Internet consumption".
Using this option, you can see the consumption of mobile data for a specific application for a selected period, as well as set a limit on data transfer through a specific service. When the limit is exhausted, all types of communication through the messenger will be blocked.
To clarify information about Internet consumption, you can use special utilities. There are programs that allow you to set up notifications about approaching the set limit, as well as regulate data transfer depending on roaming, connection method and other conditions.
Inside the WhatsApp application, you can check the statistics related to the traffic used, including highlighting information on specific interlocutors.
The "Network usage" option is located in the "Settings" menu section, inside the "Data storage" block.
There are several methods to help you minimize your internet usage when communicating.
Voice messages are not multimedia files. You cannot disable automatic download for this type of messages.
