Q: Unknown data usage early morning

I was surprised to find out that people have been dealing with these odd data issues for over 6 months and neither Apple nor AT & T has figured it out yet. Perhaps the latter is making too much money off of it to want it to stop. I am on OS 4.2.1, and I just had this odd early AM data usage issue pop up, and it resulted in a data usage overage, which I took up with AT & T. I am simultaneously now dealing with a never-before dealt with battery life issue. Where I'm at during the day and what I'm doing haven't change, but now my phone is at 25% battery by noon instead of being around 80% when I get home at 4pm. I wonder if the two are connected, or if this is just two annoying things combining to annoy me even further. The only new app that I have recently added (besides existing ones that I've updated) is Merriam-Webster's Dictionary app, but that has no Push aspect to it, but I deleted it anyway. We'll see if it makes any difference while I'm at work tomorrow.

Same issue, battery still drained way faster than ever before, even though I seemingly eliminated all the variables that I could deal with. The phone is also constantly warm all day, even though in usage it says it isn't active... so I think I have a hardware/software thing +in addition+ to the strange data sending at night causing overages, and that the two aren't linked... but answers to any of this would be awesome, for all of us.

Check this out. 188MB while I was in the shower yesterday morning while on the WI-FI. My data plan is only 200MB. It normally uses about 4MB doing who knows what. I have an iPhone 4. My wife and daughter have iPhone 3G with no issues.

01/27 06:43 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 188105KB
01/26 06:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4908KB
01/25 07:47 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1000KB
01/24 06:52 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4011KB

Drumdudeguy - did you turn your phone on right before you got in the shower? The aggregate data dumps happen at a network reset: rebooting your phone, regaining network connectivity after you've been out of range, and, barring those, the network usually resets itself in the middle of the night (hence everyone reporting 12/1/2 am data dumps). You're still having the same problem we're all talking about here, but that might be why it "happened while [you] were in the shower."

drumdudeguy wrote:
Check this out. 188MB while I was in the shower yesterday morning while on the WI-FI. My data plan is only 200MB. It normally uses about 4MB doing who knows what. I have an iPhone 4. My wife and daughter have iPhone 3G with no issues.

01/27 06:43 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 188105KB
01/26 06:51 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4908KB
01/25 07:47 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1000KB
01/24 06:52 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 4011KB

Hey, similar here. I am on a self-imposed crippled iPhone 3G. Not the experience that you're told you'd get from the marketing folks at AAPL but hey - I get to use it as a phone and a once in a blue moon text or two.

However........... right after switching to the 200MB plan from unlimited (yes, I am an idiot), I suddenly began to see these HUGE DATA CHUNKS get sent to ATT. Why? Who knows. But, since neither AAPL nor ATT can tell me why this is happening, my mind begins to make up its own ideas as to what this is.

I've about had it. I dont use the data portion of my phone. I am in the house all day long and dont use data to begin with but its set to WIFI so even if I did - it should be using the WIFI. Unless, of course, I get charged for using WIFI too (which some others are questioning at this point)..

So I dont use data. At 7:55 this morning I was grabbing coffee and watching the end of a segments on CNBC that I KNOW I watched into the ending commercial slots. 7:55AM and 52K was sent to ATT? For what???????? I DONT USE DATA. I have deleted all of my apps (as a test, and have left it that way), and I havent checked email on the device in weeks. So in addition to the late night ATT data suck, I also find data being used sporadically during the day.

NONE of my neighbors are home. The ones that are, they are older than my parents. I can tell you that they do not have a care in the world for technology. I dont live in an apartment and probably live 5-8 miles from the closest one. There are NO KIDS in at least a 1/2 mile radius of my home. There are no cars driving by slowly. I am not sure if thy can hijack cell phones but as I said - my mind begins to wonder whats going on when the carrier AND the manufacturer tell me that I am the crazy one for asking questions.

See your 4908KB, I see about that on a nearly daily basis. Many nights I will see a large chunk go up (50K+). For someone who doesnt use data, thats a lot of "billing reconciliation" going on. SOMETHING, SOMEONE is using my cell phone for data. My only guess is that its ATT. And, WHY do WE have to pay for THEIR use of OUR phone?

This is crazy. My phone has also never been J-B. But I am thinking of it - every day more and more now.

In addition to deleting the apps, I've purposely crippled my phone in the following ways:

- turned off Location Services
- turned off Notifications across the board.
- went to OO.APPLE.COM to do the opt-out.
- deleted all cookies and will not accept cookies.
- disabled javascript.
- removed all of my contacts.
- turned off push on my email account.
- deleted all "databases" from Safari settings.
- deleted all backups from iTunes.
- chose to "Reset Warnings" in iTunes and then performed a Sync and declined to send any information to Apple and checked "dont ask me again".

Nice way to live with a "smart phone" eh?

magreen17 wrote:
Drumdudeguy - did you turn your phone on right before you got in the shower? The aggregate data dumps happen at a network reset: rebooting your phone, regaining network connectivity after you've been out of range, and, barring those, the network usually resets itself in the middle of the night (hence everyone reporting 12/1/2 am data dumps). You're still having the same problem we're all talking about here, but that might be why it "happened while [you] were in the shower."

While, logically, that sounds about right - what would you tell someone (me) that doesnt use his phone for days at a time, deleted his apps.... (read the post above to see what else I've tested).... and yet I STILL see similar problems.

Though, I have not seen a 188MB chunk get sent to ATT and I am sure its going to happen eventually. I dont have much patience left with this issue. I am probably not alone. Hint.......

As a matter of fact yes I did. Every morning I wake up, turn on my phone, and get in the shower.

What I would tell that person is that they're in the right place on this discussion forum. I was just commenting to drumdudeguy that his phone isn't necessarily using all that data on wifi while he's in the shower, but that these aggregate data charges will post to your bill at network resets, which looks to be the case for him.

This is how AT&T bills data.

Its billed in events rather than KB by KB.

There is no way for AT&T to bill (or whoever your carrier is for that matter) and keep your database (your billing record) up to date to the second...it just can't be done.

This is not the iPhone doing this...

It's how AT&T bills so you should bring it up with them if you have "unknown data usage early morning".

Oh, and -- (and sorry to be filling everyone's inbox on a Friday night, but I couldn't figure out where to edit an old post) -- I wasn't saying the 188MB while drumdudeguy was in the shower is legitimate. Whatever ILLEGITIMATE transfer(s) is causing these huge data charges isn't necessarily occurring when it posts on the bill. A point that's been made several times on this thread.

I didn't want to seem to be dismissing this issue as "explained." Just badly trying to explain a subtlety.

OK so let me sum this up.
1. The iPhone 4 doesn't sent a report on how much data it's used until the middle of the night. This is NOT done real time
2. If the iPhone is off it sends the report next time it is turned on in the morning.
3. The previous day I was checking my Yahoo web mail. I accessed a folder containing archived email. This folder would have contained a large amount of data.
4. I assume this entire Yahoo email folder (188MB) was downloaded over the 3G network to my phone so I could review one purely text email.
5. The data report was sent to AT&T the next morning when I turned my phone on.
Does this make sense to anyone?

Very close. The only part that's not quite right is that the iPhone never sends a usage report to the network. The network switches log it in real time, but sum it and doesn't send it to the billing system until a "session" is closed. If the phone is off the session is not closed until the phone comes back on. If the phone is on the session is closed at the time of a billing batch update at the carrier. If you are moving around, when you leave the coverage of a switch that switch closes the session, which is why you will see several records of usage in a given day; they are from different network switches.

Lawrence Finch wrote:
Very close. The only part that's not quite right is that the iPhone never sends a usage report to the network. The network switches log it in real time, but sum it and doesn't send it to the billing system until a "session" is closed. If the phone is off the session is not closed until the phone comes back on. If the phone is on the session is closed at the time of a billing batch update at the carrier. If you are moving around, when you leave the coverage of a switch that switch closes the session, which is why you will see several records of usage in a given day; they are from different network switches.

forgive me if i'm wrong, but are you saying there's no problem? what if i had 3g and cellular data off for days, i don't have any mail on my phone, all other pushes off, locations off and i still get some data usage during those three days everything was off? say on day 2.

I didn't say there was no problem. All I said was that it's not the phone that reports usage, it's the network that records it. I've never left my phone off for several days, so I don't know how the usage would be reported. It's possible it won't be reported until you turn the phone back on, or there may be a maximum session length and the session is closed after it times out.

But you cannot use the timestamp on the bill line to determine when the usage occurred. It could have been days before the timestamp, and it actually will be if you are not on your carrier's network at the time the usage occurs. If you care about when usage occurs the Dataman app will record all data transfers at the actual time they occur and optionally where you were when it occurred. You could use this information to match to the billing records.

There IS a real problem with usage reporting, but it has nothing to do with the time the usage is reported. I'm currently nearing the end of my billing cycle and my phone's usage counter says I've used 80 MB, but the usage reported by AT&T for the same period is 120 MB, 50% more than the phone says I've used. Either the phone doesn't report all usage or the network is recording more usage than I've actually consumed. And this is the question neither Apple nor AT&T can answer. I'm still on the unlimited plan, so it's academic for me, but if I was roaming internationally on, say, the 100 MB International plan it would make a HUGE difference - the extra 20 MB would cost me $100. This actually happened when I last traveled abroad.

Thanks to everyone on this forum. I think I understand better now.