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Q: Unknown data usage early morning
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Jul 26, 2010 6:31 AMby Lawrence Finch,Cory Bauer wrote:
4. This thread was started June 5th, when people started noticing unclaimed data usage on their iPhones; AT&T introduced their capped data plans on June 2nd. How convenient. How even more convenient that AT&T's most common "solution" to customers is upgrade to a more expensive data plan.
Yes, that's when people started noticing, but that was because there had been no reason to pay attention to data usage before that. I logged on to my AT&T Account Online and reviewed data usage for the previous 12 months. There was no change after June 2; my usage has always been pretty consistent from month to month and usage since June 2 has not been any different.
5. A number of people noticed unexplainable data spikes earlier than June — around April. I have a theory that this may have been when Apple started collecting user data for iAd placement, and that may be what all of this unexplained usage is about. If this is the case, I expect they are only collecting data from users with push notifications enabled, because they're less likely to notice the extra usage and it conveniently masks the data collection (i.e., disabling push stops the mysterious usage so it must be all of those emails I never get at night).
I didn't notice this in my 12 month review.
6. Or, it's just a push notification glitch stuck in a loop, coupled with shoddy send/receive code that makes 40kb bloat to 3MB
That's a real possibility. There IS a problem with Push notifications that causes dramatically reduced battery life. So if you have high usage AND reduced battery life it's worth trying this fix: Delete the Push account, reboot the phone, and add the account back. This forces all of the stale open connections that consume power but do not transfer content to go away.
It's also likely that iOS 4 increases data usage for a couple of reasons. First, apps can now download data in backup. If you have News apps like the NY Times or AP News, with earlier versions they only updated when you opened them; now they can download updates in background. There are settings in the NY Times app to control this. Another is the Maps app will not track you after you close the app. This is a feature so it doesn't have to reacquire you when you open it again if you are using it for navigation. But the Maps app uses a huge amount of data. When I was in Scotland it used 10 MB in 5 minutes as I walked around Edinburgh. -
Jul 26, 2010 7:25 AMby Edmund Pirali,Nathan Goldshlag wrote:
Have any of you having this problem tried my fix, detailed below?
I believe I have a fix for the large transfers. Hook up your iPhone, in iTunes CTRL click on your device on the left, and reset warnings. Unhook and hook the phone up again, and confirm that you do not want Apple getting info.
That fixed it for me. There are very small transfers happening now in the middle of the night, on the order of 20K or so.
I tried the fix (both opting out of iads and resetting warnings and not sending data to Apple). and I am still getting large transfers while phone is in standby. -
Jul 26, 2010 7:35 AMby vt_native,Nathan,
Sorry, I did mean to include a comment about your suggestion. Yesterday I performed the following.
1) Restored iPhone to Factory Settings due to Frozen iPhone issue. Would not wake from sleep with power/sleep button.
2) I disabled Apple from gathering diag information via your iTunes tidbit.
3) I hit the http://oo.apple.com and opted out for advertising.
4) I disabled Cellular Data in my setting to limit any transfers to WiFi. I was especially concerned about this as I have an ATT MicroCell and several folks have suggested an iPhone in sleep will default to 3G data even when there is WiFi available.
I plan to examine my detailed data usage on ATT's site as soon as today's usage shows up. I am especially interested in the wee hours of the AM type transfers.
Depending on the results, I have thoughts for an experiment with PUSH in the queue.
More to follow.
Dan in VT -
Jul 26, 2010 2:04 PMby HBarry,I have been dealing with this issue as well, but have severely reduced usage by utilizing all the recommendations through out this thread. The only thing I know for sure is that I get no charges when I turn cell data off.
I am now trying to focus on my apps and control their usage. I am intrigued by the comment about MAPS. But does any one know how to control it? It is one of those apple apps, can you delete it or turn it off? -
Jul 26, 2010 2:12 PMby BulaRae,Oh wow. You just made me realize on that date that I had over 100MB usage I used Maps cuz my TomTom navigation app didn't get me where I needed to go. And then I used Maps again in Paris the other night.
But seriously, I can't begin to conceive that it would use that much data. And it doesn't log that usage as part of the data under Usage, so ***?
I just checked in iTunes with my phone plugged in and it doesn't give the option ot uninstall Maps.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. -
Jul 26, 2010 2:36 PMby Stephend7,Maps can't use that much data. They are all images and if you realize that an image from the iPhone camera is 5mp and around 1.5MB, a 10MB image is gigantic. Map images are simple, must be highly compressible, and are tiny, even a lot of them.
Also, we shouldn't have to be disabling all the cool software on the phone. That is why we have them. They just need to hunt down this data problem. -
Jul 26, 2010 3:11 PMby unsungsong,Also, we shouldn't have to be disabling all the cool software on the phone. That is why we have them. They just need to hunt down this data problem.
I agree, Apple and at&t need to admit the problem, respond to it and fix it.
This is a much more real problem which is costing us money and it could become a bigger headache than the overblown antenna problem! -
Jul 26, 2010 3:53 PMby Lawrence Finch,Stephend7 wrote:
Maps can't use that much data. They are all images and if you realize that an image from the iPhone camera is 5mp and around 1.5MB, a 10MB image is gigantic. Map images are simple, must be highly compressible, and are tiny, even a lot of them.
Maybe it "can't", but it does. Go into Settings/General/Usage and note the data usage. Now open Maps, tap the Locate button, and walk a mile. Then go back and see how much data you have used. -
Jul 26, 2010 4:01 PMby HBarry,Stephend7 is correct. We got the phone to use all the cool apps, so disabling them is counter productive. I guess what I am trying to do is simply figure out where mysterious data usage is coming from. Up to a month ago i had a BB with unlimited data. Now I have 200MG. I realize that that plan is joke and could never really work, so I guess I will upgrade to the 2 gig plan. Also I have not suffered the huge megabyte hits that others have indicated. That being said I will continue to explore this device till, I hopefully figure it out.
One thing I notice is that although my e-mail is set to push, all apps are closed, every time I look at e-mail it goes to the network. Why does it need to do that if it is already Pushing every message to the phone? -
Jul 26, 2010 4:02 PMby Frank Malloy,I keep hearing that "WiFi is disconnected when iPhone is locked". However here is my situation:
Using WiFi at work. WiFi allows me to use most Internet apps including Web browsers, but it does not let me check personal mail in the Mail app. What happens if I try to check is that it gets stuck "Connecting...". I think our company blocks the port in the firewall that Mail uses - for security reasons.
If it were the case the WiFi disconnects when the phone is asleep, I would expect to be able to receive incoming mail, since WiFi goes off and the push email would then come thru the 3G network. But, it doesn't. I only get mail if I turn off the corporate WiFi.
Can anyone explain why I am not getting email messages when the phone is asleep? -
Jul 26, 2010 4:27 PMby Cory Bauer,Lawrence, good points. It seems obvious now that people wouldn't have noticed it before the new data plans because nobody bothered to check their data usage when we all had unlimited plans. My plan didn't see major spike in recent months either, but several people in this thread mentioned their plans spiking in recent months for no apparent reason and I have a friend whose plan showed the same thing.
I've spent the last 28 hours with cellular data disabled, just wipe the slate clean; AT&T's site correctly shows no usage since 2:10PM yesterday afternoon. Tomorrow morning I will turn on cellular data on my way to work, use it throughout the day like I normally would, then disable cellular data when I get home to wi-fi just to confirm it's not a late posting on AT&T's part (which I don't believe). -
Jul 26, 2010 7:16 PMby vt_native,Update.
Yesterday afternoon I disabled Cellular Data. As of 24 hours later I have 0 data usage logged on the ATT site except for txt messages that I recognize.
I have noted that when I am away from my 3G Microcell, and send a txt message, I get a warning message that says "My cellular data is disabled...", but the txt works fine.
I have also noted the replies that have mentioned Maps as one of the possible causes for big data usage. When reviewing my data usage from the previous week, one of the big hitters besides the daily 2AM 4Mb Internet/Media Net Sent was a 40Mb usage when I believe I looked for the location of a restaurant. How does the route to a restaurant consume 40Mb of data? What happens if you don't kill the Map App? If I use the Map App to find a new place to eat that breaks my 200mb plan, maybe it's best to eat at home...
At least for this 24 hours I don't get the phantom 5mb data usage at 2AM.
Map App experiments next.
Still awaiting a call back from Apple.
Dan in VT -
Jul 26, 2010 10:06 PMby BulaRae,Lawrence Finch wrote:
Stephend7 wrote:
Maps can't use that much data. They are all images and if you realize that an image from the iPhone camera is 5mp and around 1.5MB, a 10MB image is gigantic. Map images are simple, must be highly compressible, and are tiny, even a lot of them.
Maybe it "can't", but it does. Go into Settings/General/Usage and note the data usage. Now open Maps, tap the Locate button, and walk a mile. Then go back and see how much data you have used.
As I reported, my usage since July 17 statement date reset shows 34MB and AT&T is reporting over 400MB on their end. If it's Maps, it's not accurately showing a log of data, obviously. -
Jul 27, 2010 4:31 AMby Stephend7,Sorry, didn't mean to insinuate mapping wasn't reporting a lot of data. I meant to say it SHOULDN'T be using that much data. I get the same thing on my phone. It reports 3 or 4 mb just for having it on for my 30 minute drive home using the built in app. I'll try one I bought with routing to see what it does tomorrow, but I'm willing to bet it's a lot.
I used the google maps on my blackberry a lot. Since my total data usage was only 13mb to 40mb per month, I'm sure it's another app reporting too much data use.
