Mysterious Data Usage in Middle of Night

July 8 2010 was not 3 months ago. First, July to December is 4 months, but this year is 2011, not 2010, which makes it over a year ago, 16 months specifically. But if you want to take your chances and not start your own thread that is your choice. Or you could use this active thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2450738

Mysterious nightly data usage issue—partial explanation.

Background:

I recently signed up with AT&T for the 200 MB plan and got my 1^st 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:

1. 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 1^st 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.
2. 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.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. Turn the General>Network>Cellular Data option ON only when you need it.
3. Log out of any web site after your visit so that the data exchange mentioned above stops for applications like facebook.
4. 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.

Your iphone is sending diagnostic data to Apple. Go to Settings--->General--->About, scroll down to Diagnostics and Useage, click on it. Then click Don't Send. By default iphones are set to Automatically send diagnostics information to Apple. If you don't opt out, you are automatically opted in. Gotta love technology making decisions for us.

Hi all, just been reading through this thread as I'm on a bit of a Data Usage quest myself and I think I've found a quick solution.

Firstly, turn of all your data usage and reports, these will run randomly and as we've found out, the phones go into cellular data mode as soon as they are put into sleep mode. These reports can run at any given time and can easily use up a large chunk of your data when accumulated. Those settings are through General > About.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and into Diagnostics and Usage BUT as below, there is yet another setting for this further in another area. Set these to Don't Send.

Seeing as the phones go into cellular mode when they are in sleep mode, so they instantly start processing any data as cellular data, make sure your email and notifications are on manual only instead of auto-fetch as once any updates are noticed on a server, the phone will fetch those updates as well but also, go into:

Setting > Location Services

Scroll to the bottom and look for System Services

Turn off the options for DIAGNOSTICS AND USAGE.

Turn off the options for Location Based iAds

Turn off the options for traffic

I had the very same issue as so many seem to be having with extra high data usage through the night, around 70 - 80Mb which was killing my 200Mb data plan initially setup as I use an approx 90% WiFi connection. We've now already upgraded my plan to a 3Gig plan to avoid over-use and extra charges but now finding these settings, the phone barely uses 300Kb in any one day.

Something to try and would love to hear any more feedback if this helps you all too 😉

Neil

Hi all, just been reading through this thread as I'm on a bit of a Data Usage quest myself and I think I've found a quick solution.

Firstly, turn of all your data usage and reports, these will run randomly and as we've found out, the phones go into cellular data mode as soon as they are put into sleep mode. These reports can run at any given time and can easily use up a large chunk of your data when accumulated. Those settings are through General > About.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and into Diagnostics and Usage BUT as below, there is yet another setting for this further in another area. Set these to Don't Send.

Seeing as the phones go into cellular mode when they are in sleep mode, so they instantly start processing any data as cellular data, make sure your email and notifications are on manual only instead of auto-fetch as once any updates are noticed on a server, the phone will fetch those updates as well but also, go into:

Setting > Location Services

Scroll to the bottom and look for System Services

Turn off the options for DIAGNOSTICS AND USAGE.

Turn off the options for Location Based iAds

Turn off the options for traffic

I had the very same issue as so many seem to be having with extra high data usage through the night, around 70 - 80Mb which was killing my 200Mb data plan initially setup as I use an approx 90% WiFi connection. We've now already upgraded my plan to a 3Gig plan to avoid over-use and extra charges but now finding these settings, the phone barely uses 300Kb in any one day.

Something to try and would love to hear any more feedback if this helps you all too 😉

Neil