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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Jul 16, 2010 6:10 PMby jbrocks,I have also noticed this on my IP4 my wife's IP4. I reset the warnings the other night and am monitoring, so far so good. I also suspect Facebook Sync of pictures to contacts, so I also turned that off figuring it might be downloading refreshed pictures in the early morning hours, which would eat up a lot of data, especially if you have a lot a friends. I was wondering if others having this problem also have the Facebook app on the iPhone and have it set to sync Facebook contact pictures to iphone contacts. -
Jul 16, 2010 7:18 PMby David Nicolson1,What about RESTARTING the iPhone just before bedtime, so there are no extra apps backgrounding? That would eliminate one variable. If you wanted to be really careful you might keep track of what time you start various apps, and compare those notes to the usage to see when the "spikes" occur (if they do)........ -
Jul 17, 2010 2:12 PMby malewis1,So, I have been oblivious since I got my phone the end of June. I used 642mb of data in the two years I had the iPhone 3 so I thought I was safe. I got an alert this morning saying I had used 90% of my data for the month, so I checked my account. I saw a huge download I did last night when I was on WIFI (and I checked my icon before starting the download). Seems either the phone or an app decided to use the cellular network instead of wifi. So AT&T told me I couldn't have been on wifi because I didn't get the popup to log in. I explained several times that I set the phone to automatically log into my home network, and I verified that with the icon, but she didn't believe that was possible. The popup on her phone never gave her that option.
After discussing my huge download while on wifi with Apple, I said that if the phone was going to bypass wifi and use the cellular network, it should notify me. I was told "But you'd have to be looking at your phone to see that". I said "If I'm initiating a large download, I'm looking at my phone." She responded [no kidding folks...] "What if you were driving in your car?" I had to explain that if I were driving in my car, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be on my home network, and would know that. -
Jul 17, 2010 6:33 PMby Stephend7,Well, I'm bummed. I thought I had my data usage figured out as you can see in a previous post of mine a few days ago in this thread. Email was claiming to use 3mb of data instantly when it downloaded at least one message of any size. I fixed that problem and for a couple of days it used a more reasonable amount of data.
yesterday I was on the road, most of the time with poor to no service. I turned off data most of the time to save battery. As is my habit now I checked usage and found that when I fired up google maps it instantly used 4mb of data. Now I expect navigation to use some data, but I didn't use it to navigate real time, I just checked the maps and turned it off. Actually quit the program.
Since the 15th when my bill reset I've used over 44mb of data according to my iphone. ATT.com hasn't caught up yet, but I'm sure it will. At this rate the 2gb plan wouldn't be enough.
Since I used my blackberry much less carefully than I do my iPhone, and racked up all of 30mb to 40mb a month doing the same things (Email with a little navigation), I would think that at most, I'd use 2 or 3 times the data on the iphone. I love solving problems, but this is getting me frustrated.
Stephen -
Jul 18, 2010 5:14 AMby jinx.pt,Using google maps or streaming music consumes a LOT of bandwidth.
If you don't wanna use bandwidth while using maps, the only choice is really buying one of options that already come loaded with maps (e.g.: tom tom).
Google maps works by downloading images, depending on your zoom. What that means, is that whenever you zoom out/in, it consumes more data, because it's a new image. And images take bandwidth.
I starting to believe that most of these 'problems' are from people that don't realize just how much applications need of bandwidth nowadays.
Maybe you can request google to add an offline functionality to google maps, where you can download whole areas as offline storage...that would be nice! -
Jul 18, 2010 10:58 AMby Stephend7,Hey Jinx,Google maps works by downloading images, depending on your zoom. What that means, is that whenever you zoom out/in, it consumes more data, because it's a new image. And images take bandwidth.
I starting to believe that most of these 'problems' are from people that don't realize just how much applications need of bandwidth nowadays.
I'd agree with you on the second item, but I've been in high tech since the early 80's. I did find that my email was one source of a problem and fixed it myself as I mentioned in 2 earlier posts. What I'm seeing is that I used my blackberry in very similar ways and am using as much data in a couple of days as I use in a day or two with the iphone. This is in spite of the fact that the blackberry did not have wifi at all.
It doesn't take 4 MB of data to show a screen of google maps with 2 zoom in actions. If it did, I'd have seen huge amounts of data usage on my blackberry as well.
On my blackberry, I'd check traffic every day in the parking lot and it was over the ATT network. I check traffic in the parking lot now, but on wi-fi.
Now blackberry does use their optimized servers, so that could account for some of it, and I figured it would make a difference but...
I went back over 6 months of usage on my blackberry which ATT graphs very nicely for us. Usage was 13mb to 45mb with an average of roughly 28mb. I can do that in a day on my iphone. Awfully big disparity when you consider they are being used in such a similar way.
I realized that the apps on the iphone are much more robust, and more of them use data, so I expected to use a lot more data on my iphone, but it's clear to me something is not right here and I don't appreciate the ATT solution which is "quit being cheap and spend more money." -
Jul 21, 2010 5:47 AMby Mitch Aunger,I used my phone as if I were away from home last night - using the maps application for navigation, reading email etc - for about an hour. Used 15mb of data according to the ATT site this morning.
At that rate, I'll be insanely over the 200mb limit.
I don't understand how I'd be able to stay under the limit when away from home.
And I still don't understand how there is ANY 3g usage when I'm sitting at home with 100% wi-fi coverage. My current usage (with 3 days left in my billing period) when sitting 95% at home with my wi-fi is 174mb!!!! This is just wrong!
Oh, and I have reset my Apple info as suggested by several others here and there is some reduction in daily weird uploads... but it isn't gone completely and in my case, when sitting in my house 24 hours a day I believe there should be ZERO 3g usage. -
Jul 21, 2010 6:46 AMby Lawrence Finch,Mitch Aunger wrote:
Oh, and I have reset my Apple info as suggested by several others here and there is some reduction in daily weird uploads... but it isn't gone completely and in my case, when sitting in my house 24 hours a day I believe there should be ZERO 3g usage.
If the phone is on standby WiFi is turned off to save battery. So if you have either Fetch or Push enabled to receive email, or Safari has a page open that refreshes automatically, you will use 3G to get the data. -
Jul 21, 2010 6:49 AMby Mitch Aunger,I have a hard time believing that is true...
the iPad I have is wi-fi only - the email fetches when the iPad is in standby - all sorts of things happen in standby - notifications, calendar alerts (which I know don't involve the network)... I don't believe the iPhone switches to 3g when in standby.
Is there any online proof? -
Jul 21, 2010 7:01 AMby BigBash57,I haven't seen any official documentation on it, but an Apple tech support person did tell me the iPhone shuts off the wifi radio and switches to cellular data when in standby/sleep mode. (I never noticed this behavior with my original iPhone, but it's happened frequently on my iPhone 4. I skipped the 3G and 3GS, so I don't know if those behave the same way.)
I personally think wifi should always take precedence over the cellular network, especially with the current limited data plans. I hope Apple addresses this in a firmware update at some point in the future. -
Jul 21, 2010 11:34 AMby hoonu,This is truly bizarre. I averaged around 300-400MBs amonth prior to getting the iPhone 4 and now I'm over 1GB already. What's weird is that I have these 50MB+ transfers all over the place. Some of them while I'm sleeping.
Something is definitely going on here and someone isn't speaking up. Too bad some news sites can't get on this.
