Q: The iPhone 5 uses Cellular Data over WiFi?

Based on posted experience, the top offenders are:

Photo Stream

Facebook

Instagram (and similar apps that send images)

Music and video streaming apps

Small updates that might be of interests.

I returned my iPhone 5 to the AT&T store.  I switched back to Android.  This time ICS.  In ICS, there is a Data Usage built in.  It shows what applications and system are using the cellular data.  I can restrict them to do background sync only on WiFi except a few Core Android OS components.

I was surprised to see so many components are using background data.  For example, Flip - it comes with Android.  I never opened it.  But it was using background data even I don't use it.

The moto is that only your OS can tell you correctly which ones are using background data.  Even I thought I was doing "nothing", apps are doing something.  I'd have to think the same with iOS.  It's just iOS provides less visibility and control into these usage. 

Now I live happily within my 200 MB plan.

AT&T cannot report instantly, because AT&T's switches acumulate data and only send it to their computer system when you leave the coverage area of the switch. If you are traveling AT&T will update faster than if you stay in one place. The delay can be anything from minutes to hours.

> AT&T's switches acumulate data and only send it to their computer system when you leave the coverage area of the switch.

Does this mean that if I never leave the coverage area, that my data will never be accumulated?

I'm obviously no expert on any of this... but If the ATT reporting that I'm seeing is wrong, it is sure an amazing coincidence.

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Photo Stream

Facebook

Instagram (and similar apps that send images)

Music and video streaming apps

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For the record, I use none of these. I'm seeing smaller "offenses" than some of the other reports on this thread though.

No, it will still send data periodically even if you never leave the same area. Just not for every transmission or reception. Originally (5 years ago) it sent every data communication to the billing system. My first bill was 50 pages long. Others reported bills with hundreds of pages.

I have had my iPhone 5 for about 18 hours now and I have done a lot of downloading from the cloud, but all has been over my home wifi connection. So far my data usage is at 610MB and it seems to be increasing somewhat exponentially. My network provider (Bell) has told me they can't access my data usage yet because I am too early into my contract. By the time they get this data I will have gone well over my 1GB data limit, with another $10 charge per GB of overage.

Apple you really need to fix this bug please, I didn't expect my new toy to bankrupt me

All

No doubt there is a situation here that needs fixing. However, for the sake of isolating the problems, it would be helpful if posters could take care of the known remedies first. 

The biggie for me and others is to reset network settings. If you haven't done this yet, do it now.  It can make a huge difference.

Then, turn off all switches that say use cellular data.  iTunes and App stores is a big one. 

I have done these and am able to leave cellular on without any big problems.  However, a known "feature" of ios6 is to supplement wifi with cellular for data buffering, like streaming video, when wifi is not keeping up. Turn cellular off or go to airplane mode on wifi if you want to stop that.

If you've done the reset and cellular switches at minimum and you are still having big problems, then it will help in getting to the bottom of this serious issue.  The sooner the better.

Why hasn't this been fixed....?

I didn't pay 300 dollars to be worrying about $#!% like this! I just want to enjoy my phone knowing that I wont be going over my data for using it like I always do. My iPhone 4 is starting to seem more appealing to me every day thats still on 5.1.1.....

FIX THIS.

u.l.b.

I can only hope you have notifications turned on when someone replies to your posts...thank you thank you thank you for this tip. Multiple calls to ATT and Apple left me mostly annoyed, they had no idea what the problem was. Your tip helped me isolate the issue, it was my google account, slurping up 4 megs of data every time it failed to connect to the account. I will leave it off my phone for now.

Thanks again.

Sorry to disagree with you David but almost 100% certain that's an IOS issue. The problem I have with what you're saying is this has fundamentally changed how I use my device. I use to stream from home to work and watch Netflix at lunch over 3G. I never turned on wifi unless for large files.

Now I have no idea when the iphone will drop off wifi and on to LTE. With all my activity I was to max at 3GB, now I can barely get through 2weeks without hitting 6GB. Before wifi meant wifi only and that is a fundamental change.

It's not about tweaking settings it's about not changing something that was the right way. And it's on them to fix, do you want me to disable all features and turn my 700$ iphone into a feature phone.

This is not a user problem.... We're not holding it wrong.

Well, now I'm pretty sure DataWiz is having some serious issues. I'll gather a few more days of data, but the huge 1GB cellular data spike DataWiz saw when I first turned on cellular data yesterday was an 83MB cellular use in AT&T's report. I was OK with the 10-20% differences DataWiz saw before, but an order of magnitude inaccuracy means I can't really use DataWiz to find the real problems.

I'm done with Datawiz too. It crashed and won't relaunch. If I delete it and download again, I'll lose all the data info I've captured so far.

Data is leaking, end of story.

Just let me know when it is fixed.

primelink

I'm not trying to say we don't have an ios6 problem or problems - we clearly do.  However, in the meantime while this is being addressed, there are some things you can do to limit the damage.  Of course, you can go to Android if you're tired of waiting.  I'm hanging in there, but I admit if I was still having big problems I'd probably return my phone.

Again, reset the network settings was the biggie for me.  If you would rather wait to push a different button to download an update of some kind, then you will probably be exposed in the meantime.

My suspicion as to why the reset network settings can help is that these phones were made in China, powered up and set up there. China is not a local network unless you live there.  Should you have to do this?  NO! But it may help a lot.

I have 3 iPhone 3s and one iPhone 5 all in the same house, all on the same WiFi,  all running iOS6.  The 3s have a 200MB plan and two 2Gb plans.  The 5 has an unlimited data plan.  At night, between 12 and 1AM (when all phones are plugged in and not being used) the 3s (all with limited data plans) send LARGE chunks of data.  The 5, with unlimited data does not.  Seems fishy to me.