HelloMukoma

Today, I am taking an unusual step to defend Econet Zimbabwe​ against the uninformed people throw tantrums at the country's largest mobile network service provider, accusing it of 'stealing' their valuable airtime.

Not in any way am I undermining the pain one goes through when their airtime just vanishes, I once went through it myself when I had my first smart phone a few years ago, but I have learned my lessons.

When your airtime vanishes and you have an Android device, its purely your fault.

I know nothing about iOS devices because I have never been able to afford one and in that regard if your Apple phone chews up your airtime, perhaps yes, you can throw as much flak on Econet cause, they could be to blame.

But here are the facts on Android devices.

Android powered devices have default auto-update and background data service settings which allow the phone to immediately update or run background data services as soon as you load airtime.

So, as soon as you load airtime, your phone starts doing that background stuff.

What this means in simple terms is this; most, if not all the Apps on your Android device require the internet here and there- chiefly for updates and location services.

So during that time when you do not have internet, your Apps, be they games or photo editors, among many, will be waiting patiently for the time when you have airtime and subsequently, data connection access.

As soon as you load airtime, the Apps start communicating for updates and if there are any, downloads will start immediately.

Remember the data tariffs of Econet and the rest are ridiculously expensive at 10 megabytes for a dollar and what this means is if your App is 30 megabytes and it is updating itself, it will cost you three hard-to-earn dollars.

What this means is that if you 'juice your phone' with a dollar and you have an App more than 10 megabytes updating, it will chew the dollar and still fail to update.

The next time you have airtime, the same App starts downloading the same update afresh.

IF you go to the data usage settings of your phone, it computes the amount of data each App has used and there you can see for yourself the culprit Apps

written by flowerstapiwa, check his blog on wordpress