Reduce your Mobile Internet Data usage on Android with Onavo

Its a widely known fact that the Android OS is a huge data hogger. Until and unless you have an unlimited data plan, you can’t enjoy your android phone to its full extent. If you take a look at third world countries like India, where android smartphone have now become affordable by the masses, there’s nothing such as unlimited mobile internet data connections. This causes a major bottleneck that limits people from accessing the most affordable source of internet freely due to bandwidth caps.
For web surfing, there are apps like Opera mini and Dolphin mini are very much efficient in reducing the internet data usage while surfing the web, however when it comes to reducing the overall internet data usage of your android phone, they are of no use.
Most feature on android need a constant internet connection and due to this your android device keeps on consuming your internet data bandwidth without your knowledge. Well, you can disconnect your phone from the internet and connect it only when you need it the most, but by doing so you will miss many important notifications.
So a better idea will be to install a data compression app such as Onava on your android phone. Owned by Facebook, Onava is a highly efficient data compression app for android devices that reduces your phone’s 3G / 2G internet data consumption by routing and compressing all your phone’s data traffic through its data compression servers.

Onavo pretty much works like the Opera mini web browser which uses opera’s data compression server to compress web pages and then renders them on your phone. Onavo on the other hand routes your phone’s overall incoming and outgoing data through its data compression servers, which helps you to reduce your daily internet data usage and doesn’t let you exceed the maximum data usage limits.
Using Onavo is very simple, just install the app from the Google play store and once installed it will request you to enable a VPN for securely transfer data from your phone to its servers. The app will start compressing your internet data bandwidth as soon as it is enabled. When Onavo is active, you will see a key icon in your android phones’s notification bar.

Having used this app for a week, i can really see a significant difference in my phone’s internet data consumption. The app works as advertised but when it comes to YouTube videos, except it won’t compress videos that are streamed from the internet and secondly it doesn’t work when connected to a WiFi network.

All in all, Onava is a must have app for people who are stuck with limited data plans. The app supports most android phones running on android 4.o and over. Go ahead and install Onavo from the app store and save your precious internet data. Last but not the least Onavo was recently acquired by Facebook.
Download: Onavo Extend for Android