iPhone 5 AT&T data usage spike (same as Verizon)

To respond to all I'm running 6.1.4 ( 10B350 ) I was on 6.1.3 when my issue escalated to data tilt for 3 months. Since my original post which mentioned my 3 hour conversations with both AT&T and Apple I realized when the Apple tech had me back up, re-set my phone to original settings and watch it I didn't notice it had gone from 6.1.3 to 6.1.4! I was certainly never notified of this as an update and I went back and looked but it would have popped in on my phone as all previos update info has. Since 6.1.4 ( 10B350 ) my data has returned to my historically low usage! That speaks Apple's fault to me. I swore I would not spend another second troubleshooting this phone or posting here. I never want a zillion points after my name. I'd rather be .. fishing, dancing, using my working phone on my working carrier. I paid for a phone to deliver and a service to deliver and spent far more than those 6 hours frantically avoiding a financial drain. I love my iphones and since the majority of our famiy / friends are on AT&T it's the best place for me. I never had issues like this but I really feel hoodwinked this time. I'm only posting now to report new info and I'd like to know if anyone backed up, reset for a day to find they are now on 6.1.4 ( 10B350 ) ??

We have 3 iPhone 4Ss and 1 iPhone 4. The "mysterious" data transfers happen every night after midnight. 99% of the time, we're in bed and asleep when this is happening. With the phones being in the house, they SHOULD be connected to WiFI - that I'm 99% confident of. So, my question is what is the phone transferring after midnite, every night, while the phone is not being used AND why is it being transferred over the cellular network and not through WiFi? Do iPhones shut off their WiFi connections when they're not being used? This is really troubling and it seems like no one has an answer of any kind, to explain this. Other than completely shutting off the phone at night, how can we make this seemingly random, yet consistent data transfer, stop?

When the phone goes into standby mode it will revert to the cellular network. This is by Apple's design to save battery power since wi-fi uses more. The only work-around that seems to help is leave it on the charger at night so the phone will stay on wi-fi.

That makes sense, except just about every night, our phones are all connected to chargers. So, it seems whether connected to a charger or not, when our phones are in standby mode, they're transmitting I've cellular instead of using the available WiFi. But that still forsnt explain what is being transmitted or why. If it's a routine maintenance situation, there should be an option to only do it when on WiFi. It seems this situation is pervasive and for many people, including me, this phantom data transfer is costing us a lot of money....unnecessarily and inexplicably.

I also forgot to add to go to Settings>General>About>Diagnostics & Usage and set it for "Don't Send". This should probably help you a bunch as long as you leave it on the charger after you go to bed.

That was a great suggestion, but I must have read that somewhere else already because at least on my own phone, it's already set for "Don't Send." Yet there's still some mysterious data that is sent every night after midnite. And it's consistent on all four of our phones. The amount of data isn't necessarily consistent, but the approximate time is always the same (after midnite, but before 1 a.m.) and it happens every single night. Shouldn't this be easy to find out? Wouldn't you think that Apple or AT&T would have some explanation for why this is happening? It's baffling to me that there are so many posts about this and we see lots of reasons why data could be transferred via cellular vs. WiFi, but nothing that I've seen, tells me what the data is that's being transferred. Surely there has to be a way to find this out.

My sons phone has basically the same problem. turning off the not to send the diagnostic data helped and also plugging it in at night helped a bunch. I do know if he forgets to plug it in I still see a data transfer usually between 11-12 at night. Neither company after all the complaints on these blogs will admit to anything.

I went through this with TWO iPhones for 3 months. I worked with Apple techs and AT&T reps (each one blamed the other), and ultimately they NEVER could tell me what that data was. I had everything turned off that would possibly be the cause. They refunded me every single overage charge I was assessed because I was able to prove that what THEY say I was transmitting was proven false by the data counter on the phone. They NEVER matched. The data was sent every hour on the hour starting at Midnight, yet my phone said I didn't transmit anything. To this day it is still happening, but they have noted my account to never charge me overages. There was only ONE trick that worked, which was to turn the phone on "airplane mode" every night. I am just unwilling to not be able to receive phonecalls at night in case there is an emergency with my family. It ***** to have it still going on, but as long as I'm not being charged, I'm ok with it. I hope someday they figure it out.

I am from Canada and we use Telus Mobility. We have an iphone 4, iphone 4s and a iphone 5. We have had the same problems with the data usage (only on the iphone 5) to the point that cellular data is always turned off until it is needed and then shut down again. I will give Telus a thumbs up for cancelling the overage charges more than once, but wonder how many complaints they have gotten from others. I would have to say that this is definitely an Apple issue and they should get off their ***** and fix it or start reimbursing people for the money, time and aggravation!! I am due to renew in a couple months, and I know I will not be buying another iphone and risk the data costs. Here's to the Samsung 4g or 5!!

My son's phone is awful unless he plugs it into the charger at night to keep it running on wi-fi. If not the data always goes between 11-12 at night. We've tried everything. I don't have the issue with my S3.

We are having the same poblems with our iPhone5's. We were using 3 gig for all phones, and this
month my wife's phone was using 5 gig.
After looking at the data usage, I saw that there was data usage at mid-night, 3 am, 6 am, 9am. noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm for each day. I called AT&T and they recommended we turn off any settings we don't need. They said Apple would do updates and downloads automatically unless we stopped it. They recommended changing the following settings,

1. Setting, Privacy,
   Diag and Usage, Don't send - turn off.
   This was the only setting that was different from my phone that was not
   having this problem.
2. Settings, iTunes
   & Apps Store, turn off Automatic downloads fr Music, apps, Books, Updates
3. Aettings,
   Cellular, Turn off Data Roaming, turn off Personal Hotspot if you are not using
   it, turn off apps you don't use regularly
4. Douple click on
   the iphone round button, then slide up any apps that are open. This is the only way to ensure an app is closed.

Please let me know of other settings we should also change.

Just so you know the times you are quoting are not when the data was used but rather the times that AT&T billed you for your usage. I would look at the data usage on your wife's phone and try to see which app(s) are using the data.

Thanks, but I would have to disagree with you. The usage details shows the times of data usage. So far, the changes I mentioned seem to be working. I don't have a 9pm data usage charge.