If your
phone
Is brimming with countless photographs, overlooked videos, and seldom-used applications, you’re not alone – and this might be costing you more than you think.
New research by
O2
Has shown that 3.3 million people in Britain have never tidied up their phones. This habit comes with a price tag.
About 42% of UK mobile users pay an additional fee each month for more storage space, primarily due to storing photos, videos, and havingunused apps take up most of their capacity.
Gen Z might be the least digitally decluttering-savvy group out there.
Based on the study, Millennials acknowledge spending more than six times as much as Baby Boomers do annually for additional storage services (£33.36 compared to £4.80 respectively).
Actually, about one in every six millennials (17%) pays £5 each month extra for more storage space. This means decluttering your storage area could save you around £60 annually.
Concert attendees might also end up paying extra for additional storage. According to The O2, 76% of music enthusiasts snap photos and record videos at each concert they go to, which means fans usually capture around 14 minutes of content on their phones during each show.
O2 suggests decluttering your mobile device at least every month to maintain sufficient storage space and prevent your phone from getting sluggish and ineffective.
The Director of Connectivity at Virgin Media O2, Gareth Lister, offered six suggestions for freeing up space on your mobile device.
His top advice? Decline auto-saving. He mentions, ‘Review which applications automatically store images; for instance, WhatsApp might upload pictures to your gallery unnoticed.’
Gareth recommends removing voice memos, videos, and pictures from your chat logs. He says these items might surprisingly consume considerable storage on your device, thus advising periodic clean-ups and deletion of unneeded material to prevent clutter.
Gareth generally advises, “Once you’ve heard it, get rid of it.” This particularly applies to podcasts, which tend to accumulate and consume storage space when you follow them regularly.
‘Each episode can range from 25MB to 50MB in size, which means they can swiftly take up significant space on your device,’ he clarifies.
Mobile phone users ought to avoid recording videos in 4K as well, since it demands much greater storage capacity compared to lower resolutions such as 1080p. ‘Given that it contains four times the amount of pixels, each frame holds more information,’ says Gareth.
Gareth suggests tidying up your apps by organizing them and removing those unused ones. He advises, ‘If you haven’t opened an app in months, think about whether keeping it is necessary.’
Lastly, he encourages concert attendees to review their recordings thoughtfully. “Is it necessary to keep all 20 clips of just one tune?”
Ways to reduce your mobile phone expenses
Gareth Lister suggests these strategies to reduce your storage needs:
- Reject automatic saving
- Clear away the voice memos, clips, and images from your conversation archive.
- After listening to it, remove it.
- Avoid shooting in 4K.
- Arrange and remove unnecessary applications
- Remove videos you’ll likely never watch again.
Have you got a tale to tell?
Reach out via email
[email protected]
.