The iPhone 5 uses Cellular Data over WiFi?

Hi Becjr,

I rarely visit these forums unless I'm experiencing an issue and need to trouble shoot and apparently you have a life as well looking at your points - lol!

I had also found many other articles from quality reliable sites and yes, the 4 and 4s were included. I love my Apple products .. 2 mac book pro's running the latest platforms, the latest ipad, ditto touch and this is my 4th iphone. All enjoyed very much so this past several months has been a misery. I could jump ship but the bulk of my family are on AT&T and I want to enjoy my wonderful phone as I have historically. After the frustration of the past 3 months, many phone calls culminating in this last two going for 3 hours for carrier and another 3 for Apple I wanted to try to spare others the same. As I came to the forums seeking trouble shooting I found an appalling amount of people exchanging and trying everything tactic they could to save their data bill from hitting tilt. Everyone needs to let Apple and AT&T as well as any other carrier know about this. Make them own it and fix it. I'm not a litigious person and would rather not go there but I feel like I was really treated badly when I could simply google my issue and find all that I had. If I did that I have no doubt our carriers are aware. Steve Jobs would be very disappointed. Lets take a stand here and insist we receive what we deserve and paid for in this awful economy.

By the sounds [read] of your situation... You are preaching to the chior. (xD)

I agree, this HAS to be an iOS issue (this started with iCloud functionality). I don't mind [too much] that Apple has programmed their iOS devices to communicate/sync information between our devices, I love that... I would've expected Apple, of all companies, to be on the ball about making sure the Wifi system in their devices didn't hand heavy data trasfer over to the cellular system(s). I understand that when iPhones are in sleep mode the Wifi antennas don't function, but I expect Apple engineers are smart enough to program the iOS to detect for specific variable conditions such as "If more than 1 MB of data is being transmitted or recieved, activate Wifi antenna for continuous data handling". Seems simple enough.

I've also always wondered why iOS never had any type of system diagnostic functionality like OS X's "Activity Monitor".

(* Hint, hint, Apple) <3

Having to constantly switch "Cellular" off and on is like...

...Turning off the water supply to your home everytime you leave, just in case there is a leak... Only to have to turn it back on again when you return.

...Sure you can do that, but you're not supposed to!

It is really quite sad. When I found several articles from quality sources as quoted in one: I felt physically ill " and I'd like to get the word out to this frustrated community that they need to go directly to Apple, forget being led through a lot of technical nonsense and receive an apology as well as a patch to quickly repair the issue as well as assurance from their carrier that they will reverse billing regarding anything involved with this poor IOS. Ideally Apple should be contacting everyone who could be touched and make good. If this shameless nonsense continues I forsee an attorney on the group getting involved in a class action.

Becr,

This ALSO applies to the good old 3GS:

I used the 3GS on ATT for a couple of years, with heavy data use (I thought) and lots of apps, and my usage would run between 350 to 500 MB per month, and spike to 1000 if I was out of town and without Wifi.

At Christmas, I bought two iphone 5's, one for me, one for one son, and gave my 3GS to my other son. We switched to a shared 4GB plan on ATT.

About February, everyone's usage soared and we have continuously gone over the 4 GB limit since then. In September, we hit it in 6 days!! I've had to block the data on both of their phones, and only turn my cell usage on when I really need it. My same patterns of usage, on the old phone v. the new phone (or IOS, which seems to be the real issue) has gone from an average of 400 MB to 2500 MB. I've posted about this on the ATT community forum (along with countless others) with no results.

Forget all of the "fixes" such as turning various things on and off - this is not the consumer's problem here. Ridiculous. Might as well go back to a Motorola brick phone.

INNRCHLD: are you saying that Apple is actually doing something about this (or not)?

Based on my personal interpretation of all I've read and heard : No,they are not other than what was done via patch for Verizon and for any individual who puts it to them referencing the internet news thus my next question is what can we do? We've all apparently approached this issue as individuals for years. I'm really surprised no one has expressed they'd like a public apology, a properly working IPhone and refunded for anything they shouldn't have paid for including the time and miserable energy spent. Not to be repetitive but here's another intelligent read. I'm only putting this one out because I believe this person has figured out the tip of the real issue as well as that he goes back before my Io6+ experience http://snnyc.com/2012/12/iphone-data-leak/

I find it amazing that posts about this issue are going back almost a year and it is still a problem!

Our carrier is AT&T and I've worked with the AT&T people at the store on this issue and did all of their suggestions (resetting network setting, wiping and restoring the phone, etc). The guy at the store couldn't figure it out and said that "no one else had ever complained about this issue"--looking on the forums, however, I see that mine is not an isolated case.

What I've found with my troubleshooting:

1) The AT&T iPhones running iOS 6 are using cellular data even when the phone is connected to a wifi connection. It is not an issue with iPhones running iOS 5.

How I know this: On one of our iPhones running iOS 6: I reset the Cellular Usage counter to zero (General-->Usage-->Cellular Usage-->Reset Statistics) and left cellular data "On" (General-->Cellular-->Cellular Data 'ON'). I confirmed that the wifi connection is active.

I then immediately played a 5 minute YouTube video (using the new YouTube app that is available on the App Store); after playing the video, the Cellular Network Data counter showed 15KB sent & 8KB received.

When I did the same procedure above but set cellular data "Off", there are 0KB sent and 0KB received.

I tried this on my daughter's and my husband's iPhones, both 4s, both running iOS 6 and had the results listed above.

When I tried this on my iPhone, 4s, running iOS 5, no cellular data was sent or received when I was connected to wifi (i.e., it worked the way it is supposed to work--when connected to wifi and cellular data is "On", no cellular data is sent).

Yesterday (Sept 6 2013), I upgraded my iOS to iOS 6 on my phone--now the phone is using cellular data usage when connected to wifi!

2) I thought that it might be an issue with our router or our ISP (Comcast). I got a new router, however, and am still having the problem.

3) I did try testing it at the AT&T store--for some reason no cellular data was used when connected to wifi when I did the above test. Why the phones would have the problem on our home wifi network and not on public wifi networks, I'm not sure.

I realize that Verizon customers had this same issue when iOS 6 came out, and a patch was created to fix it. Why, oh why, is there no patch for AT&T customers??

My suspicion is that the issue is more widespread amongst AT&T customers than AT&T thinks--many AT&T customers still have unlimited data plans that were grandfathered in, so these people wouldn't care if their phones used cellular data over wifi connections and they also wouldn't get overage notices from AT&T.

The suggestion of turning off the "cellular data" in settings is NOT a fix (especially when doing so disables iMessage text messaging between iPhones when not on a wifi network--not a good thing when I'm trying to reach my children on their phones and they forget to turn cellular back on before leaving the house!).

It will be interesting to see if iOS 7 fixes this problem (or if it just makes it worse!).

Great troubleshooting efforts!

I, too, hope that iOS 7 will bring some relief to this [plausibly denied] problem [plague].

...if not, the least that could be done is to make a cellular toggle easier to access in the Control Center.

[sigh... It's not supposed to be this way - this doesn't "just work".]

II'M having the same problem as everyone else. Turned everything off as advised by network provider and deleted apps to see what happened. I did this for two days and still my data usage just keeps on increasing. I asked network provider why this was still happening and I'm being charged huge amounts for this every month. There answer was I just happens and there isn't anything they can do. It never happened before I'm at my wits end and can't afford to keep getting charged. :-(

I too have a weird form of this problem. I have a 4S that is NOT affected but my daughter's 4S IS affected. I've had my iPhone for a year while my daughters is only a few months old; but their settings are identical. As she is on my family plan on AT&amp;T, I have imposed Smart Limits on her data plan so it can't run over the monthly limit. Granted, it's not a fix and they charge $4.95 per line, it at least prevents me from getting overage charges after only a week into the billing cycle. With this ongoing problem, this Smart Limit function should be free until this data leakage problem is fixed.

Lead_Rain

iPhone 5 Data overage problem solved!!!

I had the exact problem on Verizon with my wife's iPhone 5. Started using massive amounts of data. Tried 3 replacement IPhone 5, hours and hours of troubleshooting on the line with Verizon etc... etc... etc...

Finally fixed the iPhone 5 problem! I made Verizon take back the iPhone 5 and give my wife a Droid Razr Maxx HD, the same phone I have.

Now I have 0 problems with data overage, I have actually reduced the data plan down to 4GB which is plenty for my wife and I.

<<<<<<<THIS IS A REPOST OF SEVERAL TIMES I CHIMED IN HERE ON THE APPLE FORUM REGARDING THIS ISSUE ON VERIZON.>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<THIS PROBLEM HAS NOT BEEN SOLVED ON VERIZON'S NETWORK>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Go look on Verizon's Forums. There are hundreds of posts regarding this and many of them are recent.

I did literally solve the problem by hassling them enough and wasting enough of my time that they actually took the iPhone 5 back and gave me a refurbished Motorola RAZR Maxx HD. No Problems now.

Message was edited by: Lead_Rain

iOS 7.0 would appear to provide all the tools you need to track down, and manage Cellular Data usage...

The iPhone now logs Cellular data usage by Application, and internal iPhone Services [like location, etc...]

a) Confirmation of Applications authorised to use Cellular Data

b) Cellular Data Useage by Systems Services...

I like it...

Since this issue first came up, I have been monitoring Cellular Data Useage via DataWiz, which provides day by day, hour by hour, event by event tracking, as well as daily, weekly, and monthly totals. This App has been very helpful, and the monthly logs match the Telstra monthly Summary [all they do provide], and the old iPhone OS X 6.1 Data Usage Current.

Robert

Thank you for posting this. I will be updating to IO7 tomorrow and I am hoping for relief to this horrible and frustrating problem. I've heard successful and unsucessful stories but this more direct form of tracking will help. Now that battery drain... sigh.

Although I can't back it up with any data, I am noticing a difference in iOS 7. Before (on iOS 6) when my phone was "asleep" and I would press the button to wake it, the status bar would read..."Verizon LTE" and then would quickly switch back over to the wifi symbol thereafter. This happened EVERY TIME. So I am assuming that when the device was asleep, although connected to my wifi, it had reverted back to using cellular data.

With iOS 7, I am noticing that when I wake my phone, the WIFI symbol always appears.

So I am curious as to whether they have fixed something in iOS 7 that will resolve this issue.

After two days on iOS7, I still see the same problems....if you leave cellular on while on wifi, it uses cellular data, as well as the 1:23 AM, 2:23 AM, 3:23 AM data transmissions when the phone is asleep.

So Very Discouraged!!!

All of the well-intentioned suggestions about tracking data to discover the culprit, etc., are really of no use. Having used various models of iPhones for several years on AT&T with no problems, this overnight and significant change in data usage is simply unacceptable.

And turning off cellular everytime you go into Wifi areas is, excuse me, ridiculous. You can't even access your voicemail.

I have been too busy to try to demand an accommodation with AT&T for this (and hoping someone out there will fix it first!), but with three iPhones on my account, I may have to try what Lead_Rain was able to accomplish with Verizon.

It may not be possible for everyone, but the easiest fix seems to be moving to Verizon from ATT.