It turns out it can mean a variety of things.
Your Samsung Galaxy smartphone has plenty of on-screen features to show you what’s going on. One shows a broken triangle symbol that depicts two arrows pointing up and down. If you spot it, it’s nothing sinister. This means that Data Saver is active on your device, protecting your data allowance. So, what is Data Saver? What is it for and how do I turn it off?
Data Saver is usually one of three triangle-shaped indicators:
- Data Saver, represented by a broken triangle on a light background with two small arrows pointing up and down.
- A solid black triangle with a central location exclamation mark is an error warning. This may reflect a charging fault or software problem.
- A simple triangle means cellular roaming is active.
To add a bit of confusion, some icons may vary by phone model and carrier, but the meanings above are median.
Is Data Saver good or bad?
Many Galaxy users may never encounter Data Saver because it is usually disabled by default. The controls are located in Settings > Connections > Data usagewhere you enable or disable it.
Samsung’s Data Saver mode is neither good nor bad. It exists to help manage mobile data usage. When active, apps cannot access the Internet in the background. Only your currently active app can do this, and as soon as you open another app, its connection stops. This also means that background application processes such as video downloading will not take place. Although not its primary purpose, Data Saver also preserves battery life by preventing background connections.
Data Saver won’t do much for you if you spend most of your time on a Wi-Fi network, because you have all the data you need. It makes sense when the monthly bandwidth allocated to you is low or when you are traveling. It’s important to recognize that there are tradeoffs to using it, because in this mode your background apps can’t do any of the following:
- Download updates
- Synchronize data
- Fetch new content
- Receive alerts and notifications
You can leave some applications running normally
To overcome these limitations, you can allow specific apps to continue working in the background when data saver is enabled.
- Open Settings > Connections > Data usage.
- Faucet Allowed to use data when data saver is enabled.
Menu wording may differ depending on model and software version
In the next dialog box, choose the applications you want to allow; This will typically be your communications apps, but you can assign this permission to any app listed.
Should I turn data saver on or off?
If you primarily use Wi-Fi, you probably won’t need Data Saver. However, if you are traveling and want to deal with sometimes expensive roaming charges, you may need to enable it.
