Q: Unknown data usage early morning

Thansk Neil - I appreciate your determination - and any solutions will be of interest.  Have a great week too - sadly back to work tomorrow

Do you guys think it could be the apps secretly uploading whatever they are uploading? And it seems to me only the up-to-date apps do that, at least it appears so on my phone. When I first got my phone, and when I updated some of my apps, I notice the spike in my data usage. I havn't been updating any of my apps since two months ago, and the usage has been about normal.

I have 45 apps, 43 are out of date, some are really out of date.

Anyone wants to try not updating any apps and see if that helps in a month or two?

Calineil (Neil from California?) is like the Lone Ranger. Thanks buddy, your advice ended my woes. I'm amazed Apple has let this mess proliferate.

Note CNET article:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57414207-37/saying-goodbye-to-my-iphone-the-da ta-hog/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

I've been having this issue for months now on o2 in the UK (iPhone 4 all software versions). It usually downloads over 200mb overnight when all apps etc are closed. Monitoring apps show this is coming from 'iOS'. ICloud and everything disabled etc.

After reading hundreds of posts, Neil's solution seems like a good option. I have changed the System Services options, loaded DataMon pro and will see if things improve. Just need to buy a bolt on from o2 to increase data this month because when I spoke to them, after explaining the issues for 15 mins their response was "turn off auto data" - I gave up with them.

So as others have said thanks Neil for all your efforts with this and your blog post makes it really clear. Just hope it works for me! Will report back.....

Hi there hhung516.  I like your thinking and yes, there are data usage occurences going on we don't know about from the apps that send and retrieve info nobody seems to be able to tell us about or even give us IP addresses for but to leave an app not updated would only mean the next time you update that app, it would chew through more data bringing in the latest updates.  A good viewpoint for sure but you could end up finding a massive amount of data downloaded just to update in the end I'm afraid.  There seems to be more in the way of issues with email sync problems and the auto-reports for Diagnostics and Usage as well location updates and tower-pings to co-ordinate those locations. I've seen several apps that use Pinchworks and iAds to update locations and while the phone is in "sleep" mode, it still updates so it might be an idea to check out what app is being used through a monitoring program.

Hi GleeSC and thanks for that article post.  It sure seems like someone in the midst of their hectic schedules forgot that data roaming anywhere on this globe costs an arm and a leg, but also they seem to have missed how they have set up their email services.  One problem with email is that some forget to setup the server for leaving the messages on the server or not.  There are various settings you can adjust on the mail service and the phone to have the messages left on the server which would mean in most cases, your phone will only update with the newest of messages as a push notification not try and re-download the entire mailbox.

What a terrifying case of usage and re-buying though and I hope Zack finally settled on Blackberry or iPhone before his business expenses blow out his budget.

Data roaming, it sure is a costly and dangerous thing if we don't guard all our goods and settings.

Calineil

Feedback is Food.

Hi there jazzvendor and thanks for the update and feedback too. 

I've ran my iPhone 3GS with those settings I've mentioned for over 3 weeks now and data usage had been amazingly low. I guess i'm lucky in the sense that we're on wifi here at home where I currently spend most of my time (especially recovering from a nasty virus just now) but even out in the 3G fields there seems to be a LOT less usage going on which sure takes a lot of my mind and others. I hope the new settings will help you kill off some of that usage as well.

I've done the same as you as a back-stop.  We ended up getting a 3 gig plan for the phone once the data limits started going ballistic and am off to Lincoln, CA later this week for a work conference so it'll be interesting for sure to see what the usage ends up being like.  I'm praying the hotel has good wifi. Lol.

I also got the same reply from AT&T here when I called them about these problems.  "Turn off your cellular data when you don't need it" he suggested.  But to make matters worse and more of a joke when I asked them about the hundreds and hundreds of reports about the phone switching to 3G from wifi once it went into sleep mode, the service tech had no idea about this ?  Really ?  It's been widely publicized for at least a couple of years now and something more of us iPhone users need to watch out for.

Anyway, time to hit the Dayquill and get these aches and pains out of the way for a while.  I'm starting work on a new blog page this week too once my head clears and would love to hear an update back on how your data usage goes too.

A huge thanks for the feedback in here too jazzvendor.

Calineil

Feedback is Food.

Hi there again broooz, just a quick check to see how your usage is going ?  Any further drops in it or still having those issues ? 

I'd appreciate hearing back from someone who knows even more about IMAP and HTTP mail services so we can get more info out on how to stop all this mess these email sync problems seem to be creating.

Hoping to hear more soon.

Calineil

Feedback is Food.

Count me and the mrs as new victims in the phantom data puzzle. Both of us average about 150MB / month over the past 3 years. Last month, both our 4S iPhones suddenly hit 2.5GB according to AT&T. In the first 8 days of this billing cycle, she's used 750MB, and I've used 800MB.

On our phones, this data is not reported. At all. My cellular data usage hasn't been reset in 6 months, and currently sits at about 600MB (in + out). Hers is about the same. So our iPhones report 600MB used in the past 6 months, AT&T reports almost 3GB in just the past 30 days. Someone's lying. I just can't figure out whether the phones are wrong, or AT&T s wrong.

Opened support tickets with Apple and ATT and so far, I'm receiving blank stares. Only event I can think of that might have triggered this was an OTA update to 5.1 in early March. Odd thing is we have to iPhone 4 models at home, both were also OTA updated to 5.1, and their data usage is still fine.

Hi Calineil - my problem has been isolated to the mail app - I am back to normal usage.  The only time the usage goes up is when the mail app decides it can no longer reach one of my email addresses and then the usage shoots up.  I simply delete the email account and add it back again and the problem goes away.  Not ideal but it has "solved" the usage problem for me.

I didnt have any joy with O2- one the face of it very helpful but then they ignored my emails when they got too hard to answer; then they ignored my formal complaint.  No matter the rights and wrongs of my complaint, what sort of business refuses to answer complaints.  A google search showed the head office is in Spain so not likley to be much response from there.  Wondering whether to switch to Vodafone.

There has been little or no change and, as Broooz has said about O2, it appears that AT&T's National Urgent Care Center (Roger Beard in particular) has chosen to ignore the last three emails sent to them, all of which showed screen shots of what has been going on including a chart showing my average usage during the past year.  As usual, at the end of a 6 month span, usage jumps to sometimes 10 times what the normal is.

Taking Calineil's tips, I've now started not only shutting down all Apps at the end of the day but turning off Cellular Data and WiFi before putting the phone on the charger for the night.  Despite it rarely coming out of my pocket during the day (half a dozen texts, a couple phone calls, checking on AAPL stock) it doesn't get used. As I've told AT&T, we've got a MacBook, an iMac, and an iPad all running on WiFi, why should we be using our phones as computers??  Both of us are retired and don't spend much time away from the house but, when we do, it is with friends and family that also have WiFi!!

In addition to the nightly ritual, I've also gone though the Apps on the phone and removed the ones I've rarely used.  I've also turned off my Gmail account even though I rarely used it nor did I have any push notifications turned on.

Despite turning all the Apps off, within an hour of closing things down at night, DataMan Pro seems to wake up to alert me I am using XX% of my daily allowance!  How am I using things that are turned off? I also have Onavo running during the day and, when checking, I see two items that somehow show data usage during the day.  They are "AppleIDXMLRPC" and "imtransferagent".  I'm guessing they are related to iTunes Store and iMessage.  Can anyone confirm that??  Logging out of my iTunes account doesn't seem to make any difference.

Another App I recently added is the mobile version of "Activity Monitor Touch" and it shows CPU activity as well as all of the processes within the phone and their "priority".  Anyone else using it??

Anyone using "iPhone Explorer" to see exactly what is on the phone, especially under the "Media" banner? 

The phone is a 4S that I got in February but I am considering taking it back to the Apple Store to have it gone over, not for this problem but there are times when it freezes up and other times when none of the alerts for texts or phone calls go off - dead silence - even though the switch to silence/vibrate is not turned off.  I've restored it twice since I've had it but the problems persist........Jack

Calineil:

I live in California.  My large blocks of cellular data occurs at 9:14pm on the nights that it happens.  I followed your instructions for turning thnigs off and added Dataman Pro.  A few days ago I saw that I had a 62MB cellular data transfer at 9:14pm.  In checking Dataman there was no file transfer at that time, however there was one of that size at 11am the following morning.  Per Dataman the only thing that had a data transfer on the phone at 11am was iTunes.  I don't have iTunes Match and nothing really in iCloud.  Regardless of the time 9pm or 11am the phone would have been on wireless.  Any thoughts?

Thanks

Your large block of cellular data did not occur at 9:14 PM. It occured over the course of the previous day in dozens or hundreds of small increments, and the accumulated usage was posted to the billing system at 9:14 PM.

When you say the phone was on wireless do you mean WiFi? Are you taking into account that the phone turns WiFi off when it goes to sleep, so any background apps that use data will use 3G?

[BTW, the information above has been posted to this message thread scores of times; I'm not saying anything new.]