I-phone 14 wasting my limited G5 data on updates

ghermon wrote:

under Settings

Software Updates

select Automatic Updates - turn it on

it now says:

iOS updates ON (green button)

Under it it says:

"Automatically install iOS software updates when this iPhone is connected to Wifi, charging, and locked."

I assume this is not entirely enforceable, and when the phone senses that the wifi connection is weak is uses cellular data if the Data Mode selected under Cellular Data Options is

Allow More Data on 5G

This is the setting Consumer Cellular suggested for my phone. I think it increases your data usage.

You are correct. When connected to 5G and allowed by the carrier, you will get software updates over cellular.

This older article explains when that was added:

https://mashable.com/article/iphone-12-5g-ios-updates

It looks like you would need to set it to Low Data Mode, but do not know why it says it would affect WiFi also.

Here’s what I see under Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates:

There are two major sections of the software update procedure, each of which is separately addressed above:

1. Download the update. This uses by far more data than the next section. It is addressed by the lowest choice in the screenshot above and is not restricted to Wi-Fi as shown in the screenshot.
2. Install the update. This uses significantly less data than the previous section, and is the portion restricted to Wi-Fi as you noted.

ghermon wrote:

under Settings

Software Updates

select Automatic Updates - turn it on

it now says:

iOS updates ON (green button)

Under it it says:

"Automatically install iOS software updates when this iPhone is connected to Wifi, charging, and locked.“

The key word there is “automatically”. That affects whether software updates are applied if you don’t specifically request them. Settings > General > Software Update, meaning check for an update now and install it if possible, is not affected by the “Automatic Updates” setting.

You can either turn Automatic Updates Off/On. Going to your Cellular settings, you can stop many apps from using cellular, but System Services on the top of that setting cannot be shut off. You can only see how much data was consumed on Cellular and it will also show System Updates.

ghermon wrote:

i'm checking. In any case, Software Updates used only 939 MB over the last 7 days so their story cannot be correct that the 1.8 GB 3 days ago was due to a software update. not iTunes either.

Very little of my cellular data is being used by System Services when checking at Settings > Cellular. Are there any other apps that seem to be consuming a large amount of data? You should have the option to choose "This Billing Period" and "Last Billing Period" to see if the amounts match what Consumer Cellular is telling you.

Perhaps the download used cellular data, if no network supplies access to the internet provider directly(?)

When away from my wifi base station, that gets data from ISP locally: Phone then uses limited Cellular Data.

And here, that utilizes significantly-limited lesser plan, for cell phone; that is separate from internet provider.

[..In the iDevice settings, you have options to choose how that uses wi-fi verses other cellular data..]

..Depending on local circumstances and setup, your mileage could vary significantly..

The data is not impacted under this means, if local WiFi is used, instead of cellular data.

ghermon wrote:

My phone is set for updating the system only on wifi.

What setting might that be exactly? I cannot think of such a setting.

What setting specifically are you talking about? What is the specific setting, and how did you get to it? Settings/what?