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Avoiding roaming charges on your Android

#949 | 1:52 |

Tutorials

Tuesday September 6, 2011

Traveling the world with your Android can be a fun experience, and it usually is. But when you get back home and find out how much that brief hotel/gas station search cost you, you might be surprised. Fortunately, it's possible to control what services can access

data from your Android while roaming

, which can save you a ton of money.

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Show Notes

- On the home screen, tap the Menu button. Choose Settings, then select Wireless & Networks. Scroll all the way to the bottom of this list and tap Mobile networks.

- Here, there's a checkbox to

turn Data roaming on or off

. If you uncheck this box, your data connection will be completely disabled when your phone is roaming so you'll only be able to connect to data services via Wi-Fi.

- If you still need to use mobile data but want to control when your phone connects to data services, turn Data roaming on.

- Now, go back into Settings. Here, tap on Accounts & sync. Tap the checkbox to turn off Background data and deselect Auto-sync as well.

- With these two options turned off, your phone will only connect to data services if you actively open an application that uses data. That's applications like Gmail, Email, Facebook, Google+ and the like.

- When you're back on home turf, you can turn sync back on. Tap Menu, go into Settings, tap Accounts & sync and put checkmarks in the boxes beside Background data and Auto-sync.

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