Why is my iPhone using 39KB data every few hours when it is just sitting in my purse?

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yoyi@gmail Author

Level 1

8 points

Why is my iPhone using 39KB data every few hours when it is just sitting in my purse?

Yesterday, my iPhone used over 300MB cellular data in 24 hours. I did ZERO streaming or browsing.
Today, I monitored my phone and while I was on wifi, my phone used cellular data. This happened on 3 separate wifi networks.

What could possibly cause my phone to use up that much cellular data when I'm not doing anything?

Why does my phone use ANY cellular data when I'm connected to wifi networks?

Note: my carrier could not help troubleshoot at all.

Thanks for your insights.

iPhone 4, Just upgraded to this phone

Posted on Aug 2, 2013 3:37 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 3, 2013 2:10 PM in response to yoyi@gmail

Do you mean 10 or more MB or KB? Your title and first post seem confusing. Which is it?

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Answer 2

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

236,363 points

Aug 2, 2013 3:47 PM in response to yoyi@gmail

Well, when you are connected to wifi networks, you will drop the wifi connection when the phone goes into sleep mode if not doing anything. This is a battery saving measure. However, that seems to be an increase of cellular data that is unusual. Do you have Diagnostics and Usage turned on?

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Answer 3

yoyi@gmail Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 3, 2013 2:06 PM in response to ChrisJ4203

"Usage" is how I found out that my phone is using cellular data while in range of my wifi network. Every hour or so, I see the total cellular usage increment by about 10 or more.

"Diagnostics" -- I am not familiar with this.

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Answer 4

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

236,363 points

Aug 3, 2013 9:13 PM in response to yoyi@gmail

Go to Settings>General>About. Scroll down to Diagnostics and Usage. Open that and check to see if that has Automatically send turned on. This will send anonymous data to Apple about phone issues. Again, as I said earlier, if you are using things like push notifications, it will use cellular data if the phone is asleep, but then connect to wifi and finish any download, etc. 39KB isn't much, about the size of an email over several hours. Also, when the phone pings the network, which is usually ever 15 minutes, that can use a small amount of data as well.

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Answer 5

yoyi@gmail Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 4, 2013 12:36 PM in response to yoyi@gmail

Thanks for the suggestions. My responses:

1. Diagnostics: "automatically send" is checked. and there is a list of diagnostic messages back a few days. How can those be used to analyze my issue of cellular data usage?

2. Excuse my carelessness: On the first day of usage the phone was gobbling up 39,000KB EVERY FEW HOURS (i.e. 39MB) or about 300MB for the day. Since that first day, it has been behaving less ravenously, eating only a couple of hundred KB each day.

3. I have "push" turned off for my email.

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Answer 6

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

236,363 points

Aug 4, 2013 7:20 PM in response to yoyi@gmail

Automatically send would actually have an affect on the amount of data you are using. That is sending those diagnostic reports to Apple, so it is using data to send. I'm not sure how much it is, but I have mine turned off and many will tell you to do the same.

Yes, 39MB every few hours is a bit, especially if you are not doing anything. I don't believe the diagnostics would report your data usage. It is hard for me to say, since I use push mail a great deal for my work, so there are very few days that I don't receive mail, although this weekend was pretty light. Since yesterday morning at around 8:30, I have sent 1.4MB and received 32.5MB. I do not watch too closely, since I have unlimited data. Even your carrier would not be able to tell you what you are using it in, they just record data usage.

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