Q: Unknown data usage early morning

Let me try this again.

IF I HAVE TE PHONE IN MY HAND WITHT THE SCREEN ON CONSTANTLY AND THE ONLY TWO APPS RUNNING ARE EMAIL AND DATAMAN AND I HIT THE EMAIL SYNC BUTTON AND THEN GO BACK TO DATAMAN 10 SECONDS LATER ANOTHER 0.2MB OF 3G WAS JUST USED. THEN IF I GO BACK TO EMAIL AND HIT SYNC AGAIN AND BACK TO DATAMAN YET ANOTHER SMALL CHUNK OF 3G DATA IS USED AND AT NO TIME DURING THE ENTIRE PROCESS IS THE SCREEN OFF OR WIFI NOT CONNECTED.

I have 6 email accounts synced. Apple, AOL, Yahoo, RoadRunner, and two Exchange servers.

My dad has only one RoadRunner account synced.

I have about 200 apps installed while dad has about 4 other than default.

There may be other background stuff going on but in the test above I "shut off" every app I could as far as them showing at the bottom of the screen when you double tap the home button.

Also I don't believe wifi goes off went the screen is off since wifi sync to iTunes works when the screen is off.

Matt Wolanski wrote:

 

 

Also I don't believe wifi goes off went the screen is off since wifi sync to iTunes works when the screen is off.

You can believe what you want, but WiFi goes off about a minute after the phone goes to sleep, unless it is connected to power. To prove it to yourself do this test:

1. Go to Settings/WiFi and tap on the arrow to the right of the network name and write down the IP address of the phone.
2. Open a Command window (Windows) or a Terminal window (Mac) on your computer
3. Type "ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx", substituting the IP address for the x's. (use "ping -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" on Windows)
4. You will get a series of resposes showing ping times.
5. Put the phone to sleep.

After about a minute you will stop seeing responses and instead get a timeout message.

I AM connected to power.

Actualyl alst night - I didn't get it fully seated in the doc - so was not connected to power overnight - and there was no 3G data usage.

With power unplugged - ping did go to time out - then it came back - then went to timeout - then eventually went to Host is Down.

but so what - are you suggesting that Apple designed the phone to use 3G instead of WiFi anytime the screen happens to be off and not connected to power rather than wake up the WiFi antenna and check to see if it is still in range?

I can turn off 3G data when I am home - of course that is not so convenient to ahve to switch back and forth.

Maybe we need an app that checks to see if you are able to connect to WiFi and disable the data on 3G then turn it back on if you go out of range of a WiFi.

I may have to check with my dad - he may not leave his phone plugged in all the time - whereas mine is almost always plugged in.

Or better - if Apple is going to design hardware and software that is going to use 3G when WiFi is readily available - then AT&T needs a kick in the pants to up the paltry 200MB limit to something liek 1GB for the base plan.

It would be nice if they had rollover GB as they have roll over minutes - but then the roll over minutes may only be a Cingular hold over and AT&T would dump that if they didn't except a mass exodus if they did. 

What I should have written is not that I don't beleive the WiFi eventually goes to sleep - but rahter that I don't see any reason whythe WiFi cannot be used when the screen is off - there is no technical reason that I can think of that woudl require the use of 3G data instead of WiFi when the screen is turned off.

The reason that WiFi is turned off is that, unlike cellular data which only uses power when actually sending or receiving, the WiFi physical layer requires a continuous exchange between the device and the router. If WiFi remained on all the time the battery life would be about 8 hours.

I agree that it is AT&T that should take the blame; originally they offered an unlimited data plan, which created the demand for iPhones and later Androids and also for apps that used a lot of data (because it was free). There was no incentive for either manufacturers or developers to limit data usage or for users to manage their data usage. If you notice this thread started right after AT&T switched to capped data plans. Before that no one noticed how much data they used.

The strange thing is that I have almost 200 apps, quite a few of which use data, and 6 email accounts (including one very busy Exchange account). My data usage before iOS 5 never exceeded 200 MB; with iOS 5 it is between 200 and 300. And I still have a grandfathered unlimited data plan.

I don't have FaceBook, however. I've noticed that many of the users that complain about high data usage do have FB. I realize it is not a scientific study, but it is interesting.

Since joining this post I keep seeing a lot of to-ing and fro-ing over the same things but coming from someone who had the problem and now its gone, I'll share what I did different.

When I first realised it was happening I ran up 1.4gb in two days. Initial call with Vodafone and they knocked some money off my bill to cover it and informed me to shut down apps after using them. I also had a clear out of apps that I thought might be causing reconnections to the internet when live and some random games that my little niece had nicely downloaded for her amusement. So, panic at first and I shut everything down and used the phone as a doorstop for 7 days. I shut down push notifications and switch to manual push on emails and only downloaded them in wifi.

After my next billing cylce started, I started to re-use some things again. Push is back on for emails and I use the net quite a bit on 3G (just for browsing though and facebook) and now I only use 500mb a month which is normal.

So....by deleting any game apps made buy some cowboy app designer, getting rid of "Find my Friends" and closing down apps after using them, I've solved the problem on my device.

Appe store told me it could be when you're using an app and it gets stuck, if you dont shut it down it will keep trying to reconnect and that could do it. I shut everything down now after using and the problem has gone. Even if I lose internet on the trainor something and an app starts to hang, shut it down, try again later.

Just thought I'd share my sucess.

Update - as it turns out my dad does not always plug his phone it when it is sitting on his desk - and somehow he managed to turn on every single app he had loaded - even though he really only uses maybe 5 or 6 apps on a given day. Apps like the stock quotes and weather and google maps and mapquest etc where ALL running.

Not sure if he turned them all on himself or if the grandkids where messing with it. He did not realize apps continued to run in the background when you switched to a different app.

I shut everything off and we shall see if his 3G data usage is now in line with the other devices on the plan or if it remains anomolous.

I posted the following to Apple iPhone support. Waiting for their response.

"Phone is in Airplane Mode, WiFi is off, and all apps are closed.  Phone is charging.  Turned on DataMan App and see data has downloaded while in the above described configuration.  There is a thread on your Apple Support Communities:Re: Unknown data usage early morning with over a year worth of posts.  Please respond with your insight to this phenomenon.  Thank you."

Checking - I have just noticed that my wife and I are experiencing the same phenomenon. I am very interested in hearing what Apple's response is to your email.

Apple will not respond to feedback. They may incorporate suggestions into future releases.

I just did some quick discovery of my own situation; here is what I find:

• My wife's highest total usage in any previous month (April 2011-January 2012) is 81MB.
• My wife is using my old Apple 3G.
• This month, my wife is at 160MB with 10 days left to go in the billing cycle.
• My wife and I both downloaded Words with Friends just before the beginning of this billing cycle and have been playing it regularly.

Opinions?

The unexplained data usage could probably due to the iPhone sending diagnostic data back to Apple. You can turn this off by going into Settings --> About --> Diagnostics & Usage" and then selecting "Don't send" instead of "Automatically send". I am going to keep monitoring my wife's iphone to see whether this change helps.

There is no way the data transfers I am seeing have anything to do with diagnostics; it is simply too much data. Also, I have ours set to not send.

hey I just got 10280KB data sent to whoever colleting my info on Feb 2nd. the pattern is the phone secretly sends out this data every night around 9pm, and this time keeps changing every few days, the amount changes a lot from ~20 to 60KB one day to a few MB on another day. but clearly even a monkey can see this pattern form AT&T My Wireless Usage Details page!!!

I am very certain that there's a connection between how much I travelled during the day and the amount data it sends out. If I go somewhere the amount will increase, and if I stay at home it would be only 20~60 KB.

Diagnostics & Usage is turned off in settings, I'm not using iCloud or any backup/sync apps. Also recently I put the phone on wifi mode and i've been staying at home most of the time, there definately shouldn't be any useage over 3G, especially over 10MB, they could've streamed my photo albums with 10MB!!!!

any conclusions who the fxxx is collecting this data? I want my privacy

hhung516 wrote:

 

Also recently I put the phone on wifi mode and i've been staying at home most of the time, there definately shouldn't be any useage over 3G, especially over 10MB, they could've streamed my photo albums with 10MB!!!!

 

This has been said hundreds of times in this thread, but apparently no one actually reads it. WIFI IS OFF WHENEVER THE PHONE IS ASLEEP AND NOT CONNECTED TO POWER. So any data when the screen is not on goes over 3G.

You have an app that is using data. FaceBook uses HUGE amounts. Exchange email does also if you get a lot of messages. So does Ping, Game Center, iCloud sync and backup, news apps, Twitter, Yahoo Messenger and many, many others.

Lawrence. I'm amazed at your patience levels here!