Saturday, December 10, 2011

How to Stop Samsung Galaxy Y from Automatically Connecting to the Internet

This post  is in particular reply to a reader who sent me an email thru Kontactr asking me to help her with her Samsung Galaxy Y using up her Sun Cellular's prepaid load all the time. I wanted to reply to her email but unfortunately I made a wrong move in using Kontactr to enable my blog readers to contact me. Kontactr is a very handy tool in hiding my email address to spammers but is utterly useless for replying to legitimate emails as it provides no way for me to reply or to know the email address of the person who sent me a legitimate email. I will need to use other utility that will enable me to reply back to my readers who opts to contact me via email instead of posting a comment on the message board.

Anyhow, aside from this particular reader with an alias of TNA, many other readers have also sent their queries related to the issue of the Samsung Galaxy Y using up the prepaid load without the user knowing or in the case of postpaid ones the user incurs excessive data access charges without his/her knowledge.

This issue occurs particularly when the user opts to install or configure their email and social networking accounts like Facebook, Tagged, Twitter and many other "Push-enabled" applications in their Samsung Galaxy Y smartphone. These apps constantly connect to the Internet in the background to fetch new data for the users without their knowledge so in effect, their prepaid loads gets consumed in the process. The same thing also happens with the postpaid subscribers. I personally had a very bad experience with this when my former telco charged me a whooping fourteen thousand pesos for a month's use of Internet access when in fact I never used my smartphone to browse via 3G. I was still unaware of the setting to turn off packet data access that time so I paid dearly for the ignorance. I just treated the experience as something like I have paid an enormous amount of tuition fee for learning how the telcos rips the subscribers by handing over phones with packet data access turned on by default. Before the subscriber realizes it, the telco have already generated large amounts in their favor to the disadvantage of the unwitting subscriber.

All the user or subscriber need to do is to turn off or disable "Use packet data". To do this, go to "Settings", choose or tap "Wireless and Networks", then tap "Mobile Networks"located at the bottom of the page or interface. At the "Mobile Networks" page tap to uncheck the "Use Packet Data" on top of the page. If the user wants to access the internet using 3g all he/she has to do is to check or tap again the "Use Packet Data" menu. There are some  readers who complained that despite unchecking the use Packet Data menu, said menu returns to its checked position everytime. I personally don't know or experienced said behavior so it's best to consult Samsung or the telco about the matter to have the issue resolved.

12 comments:

  1. thank you so much litomella. :)

    i was able to find an answer on the net the same day i sent you the email but i do appreciate a dedicated post for my problem. i am not the techie type but am getting addicted with my android smartphone and your blog is indeed helpful to someone like me.

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  2. Hi Mommy Tee. You're welcome, and thanks also for dropping by and reading my posts. It's an honor for me to be of service to fellow Android fans. Feel free to ask or send suggestions for other topics about our Android smartphones/tablets and I'll be glad to write about it.

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  3. After disabling the option, internet is not working fine. now my problem is after enabling also its not working. please help me.

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  4. hi,im a smart user. can i access free surfing using galaxy y?

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  5. it will auto turn it on again ...

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  6. The problem with disabling the packet data is that, I am not able to send and receive MMS. I was told to enable the packet data whenever I want to send MMS. What about receiving any MMS? Confusing!!!

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  7. I have selected the option "Use packet data" . But E symbol is not shown on the screen and unable to access internet.
    Previously it was working fine.
    I have even restarted my mobile. But same situation
    What is the matter . Please reply.

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  8. never had to manually check and uncheck this box with my blackberry to avoid incurring data charges. even though the speed is faster, to me its a step backwards.

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  9. hello, your blog really helps., can i know how to access to the internet using smart.,, i can't connect to the internet. i already opened my gprs., but still i can't connect. tnx.

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