A new Australian developed VPN for your phone can help you maximise the data you use on your phone each month, keeping you online for longer.
Called Wangle (don’t laugh), the app is a VPN at its core, and a very easy to use VPN at that. Part of what makes Wangle (don’t laugh) secure is that data passes through its servers on the way from the web to your phone. The Wangle team (seriously, grow up) use this route to compress the packets of data along the way, unpacking them on your phone, so that the amount of data you need for each download is less than when the app isn’t switched on.
These claims were tested by independent auditors PricewaterhouseCooper (PwC) which found that while the data savings varied, the average reduction was about 19% over the test periods.
Activating the app can also help to make download speeds faster as well, though the effect that Wangle has on speed varies. PwC found that while it could double the speed of transmission, the average speed increase was about 45%.
Wangle CEO Sean Smith explained that, for as much as he’d love to give hard figures on data reduction and speed increases, there are a lot of variables than make these estimates difficult to nail down.
“It really depends on what you’re doing. It also depends on which network you’re on too. If you’re on a network which is blisteringly fast, then you might not experience much of a speed difference. But if you’re in the country on a 2G or 3G network, then you’re going to see significant improvements across the network,” said Smith.
He also explained that while speed and data savings are both centrepiece features of Wangle, the two don’t always go hand-in-hand, and that it is possible for the user to maximise data savings at the expense of speed, for example. In app settings include easy toggles for these decisions.
The Wangle app and service officially went live in April, but Smith explained that there were a few interesting teething issues that needed to be ironed out during the beta testing phase.
“What we’ve found is that there are specific services that shape the way they handle traffic. Funnily enough, one of the ones we had problems with during testing was Tinder. Some of our test group were fairly heavy users,” said Smith.
Online daters can rest easy though, as the Wangle team managed to identify the issue and now Tinder is fully optimised, so that you’ll have people flooding your screen just as fast as you can swipe left or right.
Wangle is available now for iOS and Android smartphones, with a monthly subscription fee of $4.99 after a free trial in the first month.
Joseph Hanlon
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