Since summer is coming up (not that we’ve seen much sign of it up here in the Lakes), I thought I’d share a tip that should come in very handy if you’re going abroad anywhere.
Last week I was away in Greece for a few days, and as I was getting all packed and organised, it occurred to me that if I wanted to use the internet on my phone while I was away, it would cost me quite a bit of money.
This is because of the contract that I have with my phone network – mine doesn’t include what’s called “data roaming”. Data roaming basically means using your phone for texts, calls or accessing the internet while you’re out of the UK.
Some contracts do include this as a bonus, for example my partner’s contract includes it, but it’s not a given. So usually, when the plane lands in a foreign country and you turn your phone back on, you’ll get a text message letting you know how much it’ll cost to use your mobile on the foreign network (in my case about £2.25 per day).
So the first thing I want to tell you to do if you’re going abroad is to turn off data roaming – to do that, you’ll need to go to the Settings app on your phone. Most phones have the “data roaming” setting in the “Network” or “Connections” category, but if you’re struggling to find it, look for a magnifying glass icon near the top of the Settings app and tap on it. From there, you can type in “data roaming” to search for it, and then tap on the switch to turn it off.
I’d also recommend turning off mobile data, which you can do from the Control Centre on iPhones, or from the Quick Settings Panel on Android phones. Here’s how to do it…
On iPhones, swipe down from the top right of the screen to get a grid of different buttons (if that doesn’t work, try swiping up from the very bottom of the screen instead). In the top left box, you should see an icon that looks like two vertical arrows, one pointing up and the other pointing down. If that icon is highlighted, tap on it to turn it off. Then swipe up on the screen to close this menu.
On Android phones, swipe down twice from the very top of the screen to open the Quick Settings Panel. Look for an icon that looks like two vertical arrows, one pointing up and the other pointing down – it’s usually labelled Data or Mobile Data. If that icon is highlighted, tap on it to turn it off. Then swipe up on the screen to close this menu.
So that saved me quite a few pennies that I would rather not have spent unnecessarily. Next week, I’ll tell you about another really clever tip that saved me lots of time and headaches while I was wandering from one monument to another…