Q: data usage and battery drain has skyrocketed with iOS 8.1.2 (maybe earlier)
3 weeks ago my wife got a text message on her iPhone 5 from AT&T that she had used 90% of her data for the month. 30 seconds later, she got another one saying that she had used 100%. Granted, her data plan is small, 200 MB. But, for the last two years she has used as little as 17 MB in a month and her largest prior to this latest month was 49 mb. This month she got to 380 mb before we were able to shut off her cell data. Otherwise, a second chunk of 200 MB and another $15 would have been added to the month.
We had noticed that her battery had been draining rather rapidly in standby mode with no background apps running when she didn't have access to WiFi. We have now correlated the two results, High Cell data usage, Quick battery drain and very warm phone. In case anyone is wondering about her iPhone 5 being one in the recall, it is. I took it in and had it tested. Apple says the battery is fine. It does hold a charge well. When all network communications are shut down on her phone and it is in standby mode, there is no noticeable loss of charge in 24 hours (our longest test).
Since I have a grandfathered Unlimited Data Plan with AT&T, I have been doing some testing on my iPhone 5s. Sure enough, I've seen similar results. With nearly everything turned off except Cell Data, I've seen 483 MB used in 24 hours. Of that total, 479 MB was used for Documents & Sync. I even have everything turned off in my iCloud account, Location services are turned off, no push notifications etc...
The best I can figure, this has been a problem since we installed 8.1.2 and yesterday I installed 8.1.3 resulting in no positive effect on this issue.
At this rate of data usage and no access to WiFi, my wife would have to have a 15 Gb data plan to keep from exceeding her limit. I don't think AT&T even offers one that big anymore. I might have to switch to Sprint or T-Mobile if this doesn't get resolved.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your shared insights.
Posted on Jan 29, 2015 9:23 AM
After 4+ months of dealing with this problem that included 3 data captures of my wife's iMac, the trigger for us regarding the problems syncing with iCloud, and 5 hours of logs off my iPhone 6 to be analyzed by Apple engineers that included times my wife's computer was both on and off to demonstrate the difference in data usage and battery drain under those conditions, I can say with very reasonable certainty that the iOS 8.3 and corresponding Mac OS 10.10.3 update has solved the problem.
We have now been running for about 2 weeks and data usage with the iCloud Servers attempting to sync has dropped from a rate of 31 GBs to under 15 MBs per month. Yes, you read it right. We were burning 2000 times as much data doing absolutely nothing important on both of our phones, a 5s and a 6. Just imagine what that does to battery life! The 5s would last about 5 hours and the 6 was dead in less than 14.
The distasteful aspect of this process was how the engineers were quietly fixing the problem at the same time sending messages to my contact person within Apple that were dismissive in nature in the face of indisputable unreasonable results. I must say, this experience with the multiple times the engineers' responses were inappropriate put a little tarnish on the old Apple shine of the ‘It just works’ mantra. This was my first experience in 34 years that caused me to stop recommending Apple products without reservations and with a disclaimer.
Since the update solved the problem, then I can only conclude that there was a logic bug regarding the reaction within the process to the incoming data that was corrected. There was noting short of logging out of iCloud that circumvented the problem for us, Gator5000e and probably many others noted on other threads. I am not trying to imply that this is the cause of everyones battery use problem, but it is reasonable that it was a cause for many.
Posted on Apr 24, 2015 8:30 AM