spinning wheel icon next to wi-fi indicating network activity

Exactly. Using only Wi-Fi no data sim card removed the phone voice to text functions perfectly. In fact I am dictating this message on my old phone. No data wheel. This has got to be relevant. I just don’t know what it means.

Based upon where you are seeing that, Machine_Ruse, I’ll accept that those are Apple Processes (given nicer, human understandable names).

You would have had to have been doing a lot of DNS lookups (accessing a lot of web addresses) to use about 0.1 MB in approximately 30 minutes. (Each DNS transaction takes no more than about 100 B.)

You had twice as much in Push Notifications. Three times as much in Messaging Services. Both, far easier to do.

Yes, the DNS Services is bundled under System Services in the cellular data usage statistics, so definitely Apple services. I didn’t know how much data a single DNS lookup would use, but I expected it was on the level of bytes, and not kB, which is why I pointed out the other day that I thought that amount of data usage by that service, over that amount of time, was suspicious and possibly the culprit.

During that time frame, I did have a couple text exchanges, so I knew the Messaging Services usage was explained. And I was not suspicious of the Push Notifications either, as I’m aware of the implications of having push notifications.

However, other than a couple text messages, I did not do anything else on the phone during that time which would’ve explained the DNS usage. It sound like you are confirming my suspicions that the usage from that service was abnormal.

I don’t recall at this point, and it’s too cumbersome to look up in Messages. I think the best thing would be to do the troubleshooting step again, and this time avoid doing anything on the phone, and keep track of any incoming messages (since I can’t prevent those while keeping cellular data on). Maybe I can get that done tomorrow.

Interesting find. When I first discovered the constant spinning indicator, but before having figured out that dictation is what triggered it, I checked out my wife’s iPhone SE to see if her phone had the same issue and it did not seem to have the problem. After I discovered that dictation is what triggered it, I forgot to go back and check her phone...until this morning.

I cannot induce this problem on her phone, which should be identical. She is on the same iOS version (14.2 version 18B92) but she has had her iPhone SE since it was first released (might’ve even been a preorder).

So now I’m wondering if this is a hardware issue.

For those of you SE owners experiencing the problem, are your phones recent purchases like mine?

BTW, the DNS Services is probably NOT the problem. I re-ran those troubleshooting steps, letting the indicator spin for over an hour while on cellular data, and DNS Services usage did not change at all this time. A couple services used a small amount of data, but nothing that stood out. I can list the specifics if anyone thinks that is still helpful.

I used Apple Support app on the phone today. They were no help on actually resolving it. More importantly, this rep stated they could not find any previous reports of the issue, as if I’m the only one experiencing it. They did offer an “express replacement” for a total fee of $29, but after looking into Apple’s “replacement device” terminology, it seemed I would be getting something different than a brand new retail version phone. Before going that route, I’d attempt an exchange through Costco first.

I encourage everyone to contact Apple and report the problem though.

TL;DR: Doing a full restore of iOS 14.2 through iTunes (not OTA) still doesn't solve it, at least not when also restoring from a backup.

Some of you may have already discovered this in your internet travels, but this is actually a pretty longstanding issue. If you do searches on the terms: "spinning icon" or "spinning network activity indicator" along with either "dictation" or "speech-to-text", you'll see this goes back several years. Although there are a lot of posts about the spinning icon, we're not the first group to discover that it is tied to the dictation services. People were also posting about the temporary Siri fix several years ago.

Back in 2017, someone was successful by doing a full restore through iTunes, versus OTA. I know some folks in this thread have tried resets and restores, but I don't think anyone stated they had tried that, so I went ahead and gave it a shot. I completed a backup through iTunes first and then did a complete reinstall of iOS 14.2. I then restored by backup. This whole process takes quite awhile and I can see why no one wants to do it.

After completing the above, I initially thought it was successful. I did a couple of short dictations and there were no issues. I was ecstatic and thought it had worked, because I received the persistent spinning icon 100% previously. So I went on my merry way finishing with the restore (logging into accounts, checking settings on apps, etc.). When I went back and did another test dictation, the **** icon came back and kept spinning.

At that point, I went ahead and enabled Siri. That band-aid approach does seem to be working for me also. It looks like I don't even have to say anything, just activate Siri with the home button and let it sit open for a few seconds and then close it and the persistent spinning network activity indicator goes away.

Between the apparent initial success after the restore, and then discovering the problem actually still persisted, I had done very few things. I had disabled Clips and Game Center from backing up to iCloud (I'm not sure why they were enabled since everything else is disabled), I adjusted some display settings (I think I had to re-enable the Zoom setting), and I signed into my Google account in the Google Calendar app. I'm pretty sure that is all I had done.

I know I more complete test would be to do a clean install of iOS 14 and then set the phone up as new, versus restoring from a backup, but then the testing process after that would take days. I'd have to set up as new and then check for the problem after every single app install, settings tweak, account sign in, etc. I'm just not willing to do that.

I also looked into downgrading the iOS, but 14.2 is the only signed version right now, and it looks like trying to downgrade to an unsigned version is pretty involved.

I no longer have hopes that Apple is going to address this problem though. It has been a known issue for a long time, just do the search I suggested and see for yourself. For a product that prides itself on "it just works", I'm pretty underwhelmed.

Good luck to all!

One simple question: Why is it a problem? It’s just a fact of life. It doesn’t affect use of the phone in the least. From reading this thread, it doesn’t use much data or battery. It just IS. And apparently iPhones have been doing it forever.

It does use battery and my data used 2 gb in 3 days but if I shut off dictation in settings everything is fine with out the use of dictation so for the price you pay for Apple products and considering how long Apple has been doing iPhone devices this should not be a issue actually it’s really not professional you typically get iPhones because they are supposed to be bulletproof and smooth just my 2 cents

While I can appreciate an attempt to get us to “let it go” and perhaps stop obsessing, at a minimum it’s a problem because it’s a glitch or bug of some sort on a brand new piece of tech. The phone is not behaving as designed, otherwise everyone would be experiencing it. More importantly, since the problem cannot be identified and traced, we really do not know what the effects are. I am not prepared to concede that it does not use data, battery, or processing power. In fact, it’s impossible for none of those to be effected. It’s certainly debatable whether or not the effects are negligible though.

At the end of the day, I like the things I pay for to operate properly.

For the setting:

Settings > Cellular > WiFi Assist

Since we know the issue occurs on cellular as well as WiFi, I’m not sure this could effect anything. That said, my Cellular Assist was set to on and I’ve obviously been having the problem. For $#!ts and grins, I went ahead and switched it to off and the problem still persisted.

All suggestions are appreciated though, so thanks.

iTunes? Because I completely wiped it and then just went to the App Store and downloaded all the apps I had before and then I had to sign into each one individually to get it started again. I still have not bothered to download music or movies or anything. Christmas break is coming though #SomethingToDo

Then I will use the word “expected” instead of normal. Speech to text (dictation) requires continuous two-way communication between your phone and Apple’s servers; no interpretation is done on the phone, it is all done on the server. This communication starts when you use any speech to text feature and continues for as long as the app that you are using remains active, whether you are actually speaking or not, because it has to listen for anything that you might say. The spoken content is not stored on the phone then forwarded, it is sent in real time to the server. It also refines what it has returned as the result of the speech to text interpretation after the initial result, which you can sometimes see if you look at the initial result, then watch it. What you might try is to kill whatever app you were using for dictation.

Lawrence, it is not normal because it is not occurring across all devices. If it was normal it would be happening also on my phone and it is not. Also not “expected”. I can kill all of my apps and the circle keeps spinning.

I understand how dictation through the server works. No one has complained about the network activity indicator while actively using dictation. We’ve been clear on this, the problem is the fact that the network activity indicator continues even after dictation is done. Not just “done” as in not talking, but done as in the speech-to-text window has closed and the app you were dictating in has been closed. The icon will display and persistently spin for hours on end. I’ve only seen it stopped three ways: a restart, a network settings reset, or activating Siri.

The problem was occurring 100% of the time I used dictation. Ever since I enabled Siri on my phone though, the problem occurs about 50% of the time.

If this was normal, it would occur with everyone using dictation, and would occur all of the time. It’s a glitch, bug, or whatever you want to call it. Unfortunately, you can now also call it expected.

Btw, the spinning network indicator has never even displayed while I used a third-party keyboard and dictation services, let alone stayed persistent.