Unexpected high data usage on the iPhone

A better app to download, in my opinion, which shows you exactly what your iPhone is doing datawise is Dataman Pro. This breaks down all what I assume is shown as 'OS Services' in My Data Manager, i.e. Store Service, Push Service, Message Agent, iAd, iCloud etc. It gives a much clearer picture of what is using your data allowance on top of your own, known use. It's also interesting to see exactly how much data you have used when, say, catching up on Facebook for 5 minutes - this made me realise just how easily my son's data allowance had probably been eaten up if he hadn't noticed he wasn't logged onto wifi at times.

We now manually turn on and off 'Enable 3G' and 'Cellular Data' (found under Settings, General and Network) on each of our iPhone's as and when we need to use it, to be sure of avoiding high cellular usage that we are not aware of. We only use data when logged onto wifi, or will turn 3G and cellular data on if it is needed when we are not on wifi, always remembering to turn it back off once we've finished. This seems to be the only way to be sure that we will not be charged excessive data usage in the future.

As mentioned before, this is not the idea of a smartphone but sadly, unless we're all made of money, we have no choice as we cannot be sure that Apple are not using our data allowance without us being aware.

An expensive lesson to learn :-(((

I'm having the same problem. Went over my data limit three times last month and once so far this month. I have an iPhone 4 that is running iOS 4.3.5, because last fall a pin got bent and I can't connect to a computer to update (but it still manages to charge). So this isn't an iOS 5 issue. It started last month, and I'd obviously not recently updated the software. It has always happened when I'm at home on wifi, either not using it or using FaceTime which should be wifi only. The biggest transfer was over 400 MB at once, or two times my monthly limit. My Data Manager says the latest one was os services (I didn't have it installed for the first few transfers). It's really annoying but I'm also going to start turning off cellular data most of the time.

Same here.

My iPhone 4 uses a lot of data without having app running. I only use iCloud for Calendars and Notes but wow, the data drains fast!

Usually the biggest consumption of data is the last Saturday of the month after midnight. Today, last Saturday of the month, my iPhone have been charging since yesterday 10pm. Around 6am I've unplugged it and in two hours the battery went almost flat. Around 8am I've noticed that the phone was very hot and when I've checked the data usage it was too late: 286MB have been magically used for X reasons that only iOS 5.1.1 will know.

I wonder if Apple with its iOS bugs will fix my invoice that promises to be more expensive than expected.

If I have to spent all day checking if the iPhone goes crazy or not I can tell you that I'm not enjoying the device so please Mr. Apple give us a solution via one of your iOS updates ASAP.

Hello everyone. I notice that even through i'm connected to wifi at home, when my iphone4 locks after me not ising it for a while when i start using it and am prompted to enter unlock password for a split second when my screen goes on where it should have had the wifi icon on th top it says 3g (if my cell data option is turned on in sertings--general). So it seems to me that when the phone is locked it doesn't use wifi. Since i started noticing it i'm turning off my cell data as soon as i'm in wifi zone. I'm also using the above mentioned apps to track my data usage. Btw i used to be a berry usage and i never went over 50mb a month on cell data, with i phone i got 130mb in two days with same functions. I'm fixing my berry and going back.

I too am having this problem, just got a text this morning from AT&T that my data usage on my 4s is a whopping 3.5GB on cellular! This morning I downloaded the apps and tried the shutoff tricks the others have mentioned. I did notice in iTunes that the checkbox for "Sync this phone over wifi" was not checked so I'm getting the feeling that when the phone tries to back itself up overnight, it's using the cellular network since it's practically never plugged in via usb.

Hi!

I just had the same problem of cellular data usage constantly increasing.

To me it was all about the icloud contacts sync (I don't use the cloud to sync anything else).

Probably, if you're using the cloud to sync notes and calendars it may be those as well.

What happens is that apparently it goes into a loop and constantly updates.

Here's what I did (and solved the problem):

I turned off the icloud sync on the iphone and did a back up (just in case)

I erased all the contacts on www.icloud.com (from my computer, not from the iphone) then signed out

Then I re enabled contacts sync on the iphone with the icloud (and every contact was again available on the cloud too).

Hope it works for you as well !

Hi,

I had the same issues. I turned off all the setting that people suggested, but I still see high data usage. Strangely I observed that even when I am keeping my ipad on airplane mode for a complete a day with all applications closed also, I have seen the high data usage in the morning my time between 8-9 am(typically). The only way I could stop was turning off the iPad, which I do not want to do that.

I have 5gb plan, More than 50% of my data usage goes for these kinds of untracked Apps and leaves me little data for use. I thought apple is a safe device, apparantly it is not. Since I am seeing this happening when all the apps closed and airplane mode, I also suspect if apple gathering any data from the device.

Not sure how to get rid off this

Thanks,

Jagadish.

hello... well my wife got a iphone in april and we got her a 500mb data plan. the first 3 months she used less than 350mb of data then in september we got the dreadful bell canada bill $500. for excess data use.... it went from 350mb to 4gb.what???? so immediately we bought the 5gig plan, i started doing the investigation. #1 the data was always sent out between 4am and 6 am,#2 the data was sent to a # 000-000-0777 (look it up google interesting). called apple they were not helpful in fact rude bluntly said not there problem it was a carrie issue, called bell canada and they were mistified that that was happening and the did reverse the charge. I shut off gps- cell data- hotspot- i cloud everything that was on data..... the day after the data went to 200 mb even with all off.so we backed everything up and did a factory hard reset and did a back up from i toonie and with it came the new ios 6 the past 2 days we have the data off and only 150kb has gone through, so ive turned on the data again to see what happens. i like the other post think this is a apple issue to do with hardware as it is to big a field in country, and carrier. i am convienced that apple is downloading info through the cell data for marketing, and avertising contacts. i am truly miffed by this as we are now paying $60. a month for some ones data as bell said it wont keep deleting the overage they claim we are responsible for the apps they only supply the network, apple claims there phone are perfect and it is the carrier issue.... what a great attitude..........

Add me to the list. I am seeing the cellular data counter increment even when I am on a very solid WiFi connection. Apple had a feature in iOS where you couldn't disable the "feature" of using cellular in the event your Wifi wasn't responsive. Sounds like they need to either fix this or bring back the abiliity to turn it off.

Personally if I am on my home's Wifi and the iPhone doens't like it for whatever reason I'd prefer it not to connect.

Is anyone here using Chrome as their web browser in iOS? Through some experimentation I have determined that Chrome is the culprit in my case. Here is the test:

1) Reset browser caches on both Chrome and Safari

2) Under Settings->General->Usage->Cellular Usage I reset the counters to zero

3) Opened apple.com from safari. Checked the cellular usage and nothing. 0/0

4) Opened apple.com in Chrome for iOS and the cell data counters immediately jump 10k/10k for this single page load

5) During the above test I am on a solid Wifi network. If it matters, I have the Verizon iPhone5.

I suspect there is a problem with the framework that Google is using in their browser. I tried this same experiment with other apps on my phone and so far the only one tha exhibits this behavior is Chrome. I have reported this to Google by using the "Report an Issue" link in iOS chrome.

Hi there!

Same issue: Lots of unexplainable data traffic.

Normal data traffic is some hundred kBytes a day.

In September two bursts (30 MB on Sept. 14 and 51 MB on Sept. 20).

In August two big bursts (35 MB on Aug. 8 and 38 MB on Aug. 27) plus some smaller ones (5 - 14 MB).

All data bursts during daytime (6:00 - 12:00 GMT).

Mobile Data tuned off most of the time.

My provider (swisscom) says, this must be an Apple issue.

***?

Considering legal action since my provider will not provide ip-addresses involved...

Xander

I've used 2.4gb of data in three days. i need to turn this off quickly!

I had thsi same issue - do any of you have email messages stuck in yoru mail outbox by chance?

That was the issue with my mom's phone - after two years of a 200mb monthly plan with no issues - in the last week after upgrading to ios6 she had overages twice!!

I finally went out to her place and looked at her phone and she had messages in her email outbox that were constantly trying to be sent and failing - causing excessive data since there were photos attached.

Something odd happened when she upgraded - she got an @icloud.com email account added in addition to her @me.com email - her messaged defaulted to this 'from' account after the upgraded but could actually send messages.

I had the same problem with att. today i got a messsage i had used 80% of data in just a week of using Iphone5 on ATT. I never had this issue before IOS6. I need to turn off the data. This is crazy. I had wifi at home & home and still 80% in a week. pretty sure that there is a issue. Is the fix only for Verizon. How abt ATT customers.

Same problem here. 5 gigabytes last night!! Oy. Talking w/ AT&T re: upcoming bill. Bug report to Apple.

apple.com/feedback/