Mysterious nightly data usage issue—partial explanation.
Background:
I recently signed up with AT&T for the 200 MB plan and got my 1st smart phone: iPhone 4s. Then, noticed that my daily average was exceeding 6+MB (in order to stay within the 200MB limit). I was mostly using internet at home using WiFi. But, at work, I had to rely on AT&T network for emails and occasional web browsing. On some days, the usage was 17MB which I couldn’t figure out. And, the time stamps were like 12:38 a.m. when I was sleeping with the phone in stand by/sleep mode.
I called AT&T twice, read the discussion threads of the Apple Support Communities, discussed it with experienced smart phone users, and then did my own research as AT&T reps couldn’t explain what’s going on other than providing me boiler-plate responses.
Explanation:
- Time to time, the iPhone sends data usage statistics to AT&T; I believe the frequency is at least once a day. The time stamp is the 1st AT&T network data usage by your phone since the last time iPhone send the stats. The data volume is the total of sent and received starting from the reported time stamp until the next time iPhone sends the stats. The time stamp should have been the reporting time. You may see multiple entries on any given day. Keep in mind that your phone uses AT&T network when you are within a WiFi network, but your phone is in standby mode.
- Applications like location services, facebook, google maps, etc. continuously exchange data with your iPhone. When you open facebook, you see the most current state and instantly get all the updates which is cool. But, this requires your facebook to constantly communicate with your iPhone using the AT&T network when your phone is not in a WiFi network or it is in standby. Plus, these websites have lots of graphics--they quickly add up.
- The junk and marketing emails that you delete without even looking all add up to MBs every day. These come with lots of graphics.
Remedy:
- If you don’t like to headache, pay $10/month extra to move to the 2GB/month plan. I am not ready to do it now.
- Turn the General>Network>Cellular Data option ON only when you need it.
- Log out of any web site after your visit so that the data exchange mentioned above stops for applications like facebook.
- Kill applications that run in the background even when you quit, e.g. Maps—double tap on the home button, put your finger softly on any application and hold until they show the red-circle with a negative sign—click on the “-“ sign one by one so that they are not running on the back ground.
In order to experiment yourself, play with the General>Usage>Cellular Usage>Reset Statistics along with turning the General>Network>Cellular Data option ON and OFF to monitor your usage and get a feel for how you are doing. Based on the limited information available to me and those provided by the AT&T reps, I’m confident that the data usage information is accurate.
I hope this helps.
