I mean, that’s what Google does best right? They take mundane things, dress them up, give users a slick new interface and suddenly everyone’s using it. Well, except social media and chat apps, they just cant seem to get those right (RIP Google Plus and Allo + Duo).
This time, they’re tackling a topic that plagues pretty much all of us: Limited mobile data quota. With their new app Datally, it looks like they want to make it so anyone can easily save data effortlessly. Good guy Google.
Datally has two big goals. The first is to help users save data and it does so by letting users control the flow of data. This can be done on a device-wide scale or on an individual app-by-app basis. In the home page, you can also quickly flick the big blue slider to immediately switch on data saver. If you want more granular control you can hit the “Manage data” tab and individually block or allow certain apps to access data during Data saver.
According to Google, they’ve been testing Datally in the Philippines and they’ve found that users were able to save up to 30% on data each month which is not insignificant.
The second big goal is to let users understand their data usage patterns. This is done through the pretty graphics and bars littered throughout the app. It breaks things down really nicely and you can choose to view your data consumption by day, week, or month.
Besides that, probably the coolest feature about Datally is the fact that when Data saver is on, you can see a little popup at the side of your application that gives you live updates on how much data that app is using. You can tap the popup and kill data access to that app right there too.
Datally also has a WiFi search function that can let you know of nearby locations with WiFi connectivity and whether those connections are secured or not.
Of course, a lot of these data saving features like individual app data management, data usage tracking and data saver modes are already available on pretty much all Android smartphones — even the stock ones. But those are pretty ugly and rather boring to look at. They’re also buried in the settings menu so casual smartphone users may never use them.
Datally, on the other hand, is much prettier and more intuitive than the ones that are built-in. But does it do an objectively better? We’re not so certain about that.
Download Datally from the Play Store.
