How to Fix – Mobile Data that Turns on Automatically on Android

For the last week or so, mobile data on my phone started to turn on automatically. Going through the various forums and after trying different recommended methods, finally found the culprit. In my case, an app was the reason causing the mobile data to be turned on by itself.

The android app that was responsible for this mobile data connection havoc was Battery Defender. I forced the app to stop, then finally got rid of battery draining and high data usage.

After digging more into the battery defender settings, there is a setting called “Data Network Prefer State” in battery defender which allows you choose whether to keep the cellular network on or off. It must be only turned on when you select the “Data” under the “Switch” from the main interface. However, although the “Data” option was not selected, somehow the “Data Network Prefer State” was turned on. That is probably a bug on the app side.

Toggling the “Data” setting once to turn it on, then toggling once more disabled the “Data Network Prefer State” back to off state, which what it should have been.

Battery Defender app bug causes mobile data to turn on automatically

The issue seems not to be related to smartphone brands, since people with different mobile phones from Samsung, Lenovo, Htc, Huawei were complaining of the same problem.

Moreover, there might more than one cause of the problem, so give a try to other fixes (these are the ones I tried) that I mention below if an android application is not the root of the trouble in your case.

How to Fix If Mobile Data Turns on by Itself on Android.

  1. Check if you have installed any battery optimization app on your phone. If installed, find the app from apps menu, and tap on the “Force Stop.” After disabling the app, control whether mobile data is turning on automatically or not. If this doesn’t work for you, go through your apps list, and look for any suspicious third-party app or virus app running in the background, disable them, then check if the problem is resolved or not.
  2. Enable “Restrict background data” – Go to Settings–> Data Usage and select “Restrict background data”, which stops the background syncing.
  3. Turn off Smart Network Switch – If you have this setting on your mobile phone, and if it is turned on, your mobile phone is connected to the cellular network automatically when the Wi-Fi connection is weak. Just turn this setting off, and check if the problem persists.
  4. Boot your phone into Safe Mode – Third party apps are not run in safe mode. Starting the phone in safe mode helps you to isolate the issue: is it a third party app or something else that triggers the problem. Start the mobile phone in safe mode, and check if mobile data is still turning on automatically. If it is not turned on by itself, then go to step 1 and go through the all installed apps one by one, and finally find the wicked app.
  5. Factory Reset – The Factory Reset should be the last resort as it erases all user data, third-party applications and device settings from internal flash storage. Your phone goes back to its initial default settings. If you want to give this a try, don’t forget to back up your data.