Spinning wheel icon

I’ve read enough reviews and feedback now to say with confidence that this is a glitch with the iPhone SE and the newest iOS update. Not sure how much battery life it’s sucking away at but sure is annoying. Maybe one of the brainiacs at apple can address this?

I was on the fence whether to stick with IPhone when I bought mine last month... should have bought a Samsung.

It isnt an issue or a bug. It is network traffic. Quite normal.

Phones are connected to the internet and this is the phone talking with the internet.

Can be email or social media polling, can be updating photos in iCloud. Could be passwords synchronising with Keychain. If you have Google drive or Dropbox or Onedrive it is sync’ing.

If it annoys you or if you are worried about cellular data use then turn off all cloud services or make them wifi only.

etc. stands for everything the supprt wanted me to do. inclusive buying a new Phone and returning the "old" one.

it is by far to easy to say it isn't a bug just because it is network traffic. network traffic all the time is a bug. there is

absolutely no other position than seeing this as a bug. a constantly turning spinning wheel is simply not correct. especially

when compared to other phones that dont have this problem when same apps and same SIM card are used.

your feedback is very welcome in case you have any better advices than:

"If it annoys you or if you are worried about cellular data use then turn off all cloud services or make them wifi only.

i have a question for you i have se2020 same spinning data wheel all back ground refresh is off phone is year old nothing new put in i have to reset many times a day all the hacks do not work at one point saying hello to siri did work but no more.

i find it hard to believe that apple has no idea after years of this. Do you know something that will help,that would be outstanding.It does drain battery way to much to ignore. putting phone in airplane modes shuts cellular data off works but since its a date wheel spinning that would be obvious. i dont i have shut cellular off to all the apps and wheel still goes if this helps

thank you in advance if you can help

I have reset my iPhone SE to factory settings and shut off anything that might run in the background. I did not add any apps, photos, contacts absolutely nothing. Just plain stick iPhone and intermittently the spinning wheel icon comes on out if know where. Every so often I can hit the Siri button and it will shut off the spinning wheel. Now if the spinning wheel was normal then why would hitting Siri several times shut it off. Also my wife has this exact same phone purchased on the same day and hers only does it very very little. So how can there be a huge discrepancy between hers doing it very little and mine doing it every day all day long until I force restart. That does not sound normal by any engineering standard. It is 100 percent a bug that needs to be fixed. I want to switch to Samsung; however I’m stuck paying on this as it is brand new.

Tried switching off wifi now spinning with just cel data.

closed all apps. Still spins.

Spins 24/7.

didn’t spin 24/7 before the iOS update.

100’s of people with the iPhone SE reporting the same thing - spins constantly.. I guess we are all now coincidentally receiving 24/7 network traffic since the update.

Quite normal? Never had this with any of my other iPhones. It’s a bug.

Turning on Airplane mode was simply a test scenario not a desired permanent situation! If the wheel stops then it just proves it is normal polling and syncing traffic.

Samsungs and iphones all talk to the internet the same.

It’s normal.

Enjoy and stop worrying.

Mine spins every time I post an answer and every few minutes as emails and whatsapps get pushed but it doesn’t spin continually because I don’t have thousands of photos in iCloud constantly syncing. If you buy into the iCloud hype you can expect a very lively wifi traffic .

Turning off background refresh does not turn off sync and social media traffic. All apps can be called in the background whatever the settings. It will not initiate its own processing is all.

I have nothing syncing and don't use iCloud photos. In fact, mine is a newer phone that only has about 10 photos total. It spins constantly once I use the dictation icon in any app (messages, notes, pages, etc.). It never stops spinning until I reboot my phone. It all starts again as soon as I tap the dictation icon. I don't really care what you say, this is not normal behavior. I've never had an iPhone that did this. It's a bug.

Please stop trying to convince us all that this is normal iPhone behavior.

Thanks for providing that link! I also reported this bug and included links to 4 separate Apple discussion pages I found pertaining to this exact issue (in iOS 14). I'm not sure if they will read them, but they should.

*My current (hopefully temporary) fix has been to turn off "enable dictation" in keyboard settings since dictation seems to trigger this on my phone. I turned it off yesterday and the spinning wheel hasn't returned. However, I've lost a very useful feature as a result.

I am on the phone with Apple support now. He is stating that this is a known issue and Apple has escalated it and has been working on a resolution for 3 months. It's a joke. Apple will not admit that the 14.2 and 14.3 IOS updates also drastically reduced battery life on the iPhone SE 2020 and iPad's.

Apple, please do the right thing here. I have documented time and time again with you all’s tech support regarding the network wheel spinning. Talk is cheap so I could literally just be saying this for attention so feel feee to reach out to me and confirm for yourself that I have been jumping y’all’s hoops for six months. Yes at least six months. Reset this reset that shut this off shut that off. Absolutely nothing works. Why is it so hard for a company to just admit there is an issue and they will attempt to fix it. This 24/7 spinning wheel is not normal. I should not have to shut my phone off every time the network status bar spins for hours and hours. and yes my tech confirmed it is eating my battery by documented screenshots. I am Stuck with this phone till it’s paid off but rest assured I will never buy apple again

Glad that worked for you. I've always had the "Analytics sharing" option disabled on my iPhone and still have the issue with the constantly spinning network activity icon. The only thing that worked for me is turning off dictation, since that proved to be the trigger on my iPhone SE (and also on my wife's). The spinning network activity icon hasn't returned for either of us since turning it off 4 days ago.

I really hope they fix this soon. I rely on dictation a lot and hate that I have to turn it off as a workaround to Apple's iOS bug.

This is ridiculous. I have never had this issue until one of the recent updates. Apple needs to fix it ASAP. I may be switching phones. I knew battery should be supplied to all of us who have this issue.

It would be considered quite normal except it continues for most people for DAYS on end. You have not experienced it as of yet, however when you do you will see how it drains and how annoying it is. There are a ton of comments on how to fix it and it does fix for awhile, however normally it is something stuck in updating, even if you turn off all updates it still doesn't fix it.. and even if you turn off and go wifi only and turn off your wifi it doesn't stop it.