The iPhone 5 uses Cellular Data over WiFi?

If Apple is willing to acknowledge this issue, rather than denying the bug ever exists in their AT&T iPhone5's, I challenge Apple to take back these defective phones and see it for themselves whether we made up these imaginary bugs or groundless complaints. Besides, if Apple is willing to do that, then their engineers will diagnose where the problems are with the device in front of them without having us diagnose for them remotely, so there is no denial to be debated here. Wouldn't this settle the issue of whether there is a real bug or entirely our imagination?

they will, when 50% of the customers stop buying their products. then, maybe they will wake up and smell the coffee. till then, its every man, woman and widget for themselves!

Isn't it funny to see that even the multiple cellular carriers from across Europe and America had already acknowledged this known bug to refund the overage charge, yet the device manufacturer's engineers are still in denial?

I understand they want to diagnose the root cause of the problem, but without a defective device in front of them, I don't see how they can phantom the bug in someone's device, when not all iPhones were created equal?

Got an iPhone 4 that my son is using. AT&T claims he used 200 MB of data (sending) last night even though he was connected to our WiFi network at home.

Just because you may think you are connected doesn't necessarily mean it is working correctly. If for some reason you are uploading a big file to say, dropbox... now your internet cuts out for some time (note: you will still be connected successfully to wifi, but unable to surf) ... you'll transfer that file using your 3g/4g data till it ends. a smooth handover to wifi may only occur with new requests.

Thats not true for my iPhone 4s or 5, If I am connected to wifi and it goes out it will not transfer data at all. I have to turn off wifi manually for it to work until wifi comes back on. If the wifi signal goes out I would then be on the 4g network. But all of that aside this is not the issue of the data overages, this is caused by a bug in the ios software confirmed by Apple.

This problem continues - with AT&T blaiming Apple, and Apple pretty much ignoring everyone. I had thought 6.01 would solve it, nope. Now iOS 6.1 is out - but no better.

It's expensive, but frankly I think most folks don't have the time or effort to complain or document the problem, they just either shut off cell data, or pay the bill. AT&T is fine with that, till folks bail to T-Mobile just to get unlimited data, or go to Samsung and give up on iPhone all together. I have 4 iPhones on my bill - and just the 5 has the data leakage problem. Huge usage, 1 gig every 2 days (no streaming video, music, or anything).

http://imgur.com/diFm50E

This isn't limited to AT&T. I'm on Australia's Telstra with an iPhone 5 on iOS6.1.

I've been racing towards my 1GB plan limit within about two weeks (on iOS6.02), doing nothing different than what I have been doing with my iPhone 3G. I have wifi at home and at work, so 90% of my usage was under wifi cover.

I checked my usage this morning (with iOS6.1), then had the phone sitting on my desk in wifi cover, and about 20min ago I got a warning that I just exceeded 82% of my plan. It chewed data just sitting on my desk with wifi on.

So the 6.1 upgrade didn't fix it.

What I have noticed though is that the data leakge does not seem to happen when LTE is disabled, dropping the phone back into 3G.

It would appear that some other poster was right in suggesting that iOS 6 will auto-switch to the fastest network it finds, and a good LTE signal can be faster than an average wifi signal from an older (and slower) wifi access point.

Definitely something that Apple needs to fix. There should be an option in Settings that allows people to choose how the network selection is done, eg

* Use Cellular Data if faster than Wifi yes/no

or

* Never use Cellular if Wifi is available yes/no

or

* Prompt before using faster Cellular Data while on Wifi yes/no

Or something like that. It's our money, and we should be able to choose.

We should not be forced to buy an expensive data so that we don't run out of Cellular quota WHILE supposedly using Wifi.

That is a very interesting clue. There is a setting to not use LTE, I believe. An experiment could be to leave cellular dat on, but not enable LTE.

Also, if you have a technical support plan, they can remotely access the phone and you can have a discussion with them as they actually browse the phone. Perhaps this is a good approach to have them "handle" the phone and verify what it is doing (leaking data).

I tried that (disabling LTE) and it made no different during testing.

Ian.

The only issue with this LTE theory is that it is not limited to LTE nor is it limited to the iPhone 5. My son's phone has this data issue and his phone is an original iPhone 4 running iOS 6.01. My iPhone 5 on AT&T (LTE) does not have the issue.

All

I am a veteran of this discussion and have been following it for many months. I recently found an excellent article that summarizes the issues:

http://tidbits.com/article/13354

As noted, there are things you can do to mitigate the problem. A good part of it is under your control. The extent you want to take advantage of cel assisted services may depend on your data plan. They have a cost. If you totally want to prohibit cel usage while you are doing something on wifi, use airplane mode with wifi on. Makes most sense with an ipad rather than a iPhone of course.

Beyond that, the interaction of any given application with an OS, be it Apple's or Android, can be suboptimal or flawed in very obscure and complex ways. So, if you think you can escape the madness by moving to Android, think again:

http://forums.androidcentral.com/droid-bionic/151176-massive-data-leakage-burnin g-thru-my-allowance.html

However, email clients may be an especially vulnerable area for iOS, especially Exchange:

http://snnyc.com/2012/12/iphone-data-leak/

Good luck to all, including Apple. I have my usage under control, and I like my iphone5 a lot, especially FaceTime on cellular.

So being an iphone user for over 2 years with a 1gb plan I have never gone close to using my data allowance. I purchased an iphone 5 in october 2012 and continued my usage as per normal - 200-300mb per month. I updated 6.02 at the end of December and my data usage spiked a little but not of notice. This friday gone I get a text from my provider(Telstra in Aus) saying I had used 890mb in 12 days (most of those while at home on wi-fi). Talk about a freak out!

Since then I have turned off everything and anything to do with cellular data. I have always had manual retrieve for my emails and still if on wi-fi I leak cellular data. So I turn cellular data off at home - ok no cellular leakage but my wifi data ticking over. In the hour it has taken to read through this forum and relevant attachments with no apps open and everything turned off (making it more like an intellectually challenged phone than a smartphone) and it has used 460kb of data in one hour. I am not a mathemetician but to me that means 10mb data a day when idle - 300mb a month with NO USAGE - that is as much usage I used to use a in month being a heavy user.

When I turned on celluar usage at home right next to my wi-fi box I started leaking cellular data within minutes.

When I turned on cellular usage out and about (all apps off) I started burning cellular data - got up to 50kb in about 2 minutes. My calcs say that while phone is idle it will leak 1gb over a month before the first app is opened.

This is ridiculouls. I have deleted a couple of apps - such as Facebook photos, Instagram etc but no change.

Let me stress here - I have read this entire forum including the tidbits article and turned EVERYTHING off as per all of the instructions and some extras to boot and yet my issue persists.

Rang Telstra - checked my connection everything fine. They said they would give me a free gb to get through the rest of this billing cycle but does not help me next month or for the next 21 months of my contract! Could just hear a lot of shoulder shrugging by the tech staff over the phone - Apple's problem....not theirs.

Have not updated to 6.1 yet as seems fixes are all irrelevant to me - and does not appear to acknowledge the problem.

What to do next??? Do i take it to apple and show them the leakage and demand a replacement?

Hey Guys and Girls,

Like David, I have been involved in these discussion for many months now, and can assure you that if you take a little time out to work thru your settings, AND turn off Apps running in the background when you do not need them to be running, you will take control of your Cellular Data Usage.

The tidbits article is the most thorough guide I have seen, try to work you way thru it and see what happens.

I have found DataWiz to be quite accurate, generally logs a little more than Telstra [in Australia], since some of the Telstra Services are free. But be aware, you must leave DataWiz running in the back ground at all times, otherwise it may miss some activity. DataWiz does not communicate with the outside world, just monitors activity on your iPhone.

David,

Good to hear you are continuing to monitor this forum.

I too have my Cellular Data Usage under control, since visiting this forum many months ago.

I do like the tidbits article, it is very complete, with one additional precaution; keep an eye on Apps you may inadvertently leave running in the background.

Just to confirm I have EVERYTHING turned off including apps turned off in background and still leaking like a seive.

Glad these suggestions have worked for some but apparently it is no silver bullet....