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IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

Upgraded my wife's iPhone 5 32GB to IOS 8 yesterday. About an hour after I upgraded she got an SMS from her provider saying she only had 100MB left of her data package. About a minute later she got another SMS to say it ran out. I reset Cellular Usage Statistics and bought another 250MB data bundle.

About 2 hours later she got another SMS saying she had again used up all data and that out of bundle rates apply, when I checked Data Usage it had used 297MB. She did not use the phone at all during this time.


I have disabled everything under Use Cellular Data For: long ago, except Contacts, Find iPhone, Maps, IMDB, Mail, Settings, Weather and WhatsApp.

None of these Apps had excessive usage under them, some a few KB. System Services had used 404KB.


Personal Hotspot was Off.


Everything in iCloud except for Find My iPhone is off. iCloud is signed in.


Use Cellular Data is off under iTunes & App Store


I have gone through all the Apps at the bottom of Settings and none of them have Cellular Data active.


iTunes Radio under Music is not set to use Cellular.


Is there anywhere else I can check what would be using so much data, have turned Cellular Data off for now?

I am at a loss, I upgraded my iPhone 5 16GB the same way as my wife's and I have not used any extra data, sitting at 247MB since September 1st.

My wife's phone has not changed since before the upgrade, so all settings were the same and it has never used this much data.


Any help would be appreciated.

iPhone 5, iOS 8

Posted on Sep 19, 2014 12:39 AM

Reply
283 replies

Jan 24, 2015 2:34 AM in response to Mitton79

Hi Guys,

Exactly I faced same problem, its extremely bad news for me that my provider send a SMS to me and say your internet package ( 2 GB ) finished after 1 day! I confused and shocked!

can anyone help me that if i update my ios version from 8.0.2 to higher version this bug (!!) will be solved or not?


I appreciate any help.

Jan 28, 2015 7:48 AM in response to dooror

I have spent an hour on 'live chat' with Verizon trying to understand why my daughter's phone uses 2gb of data in less than 3 days. Has happened every month since she went from a Iphone 4 to a 6. Verizon told me the Iphone 6 is 'more updated' and 'use more data'. Really? I would think up dated meant less data. Funny that my husband's upgrade has not caused the same issue. We have turned everything we can off, removed apps, etc. (everything recommended on these forums!) and even turned off phone at night but it continues to eat up data. $100 extra last month and $150 this month. All Verizon could offer me was to change plans and increase my data. I'm now hoping that on the new family plan we don't go over. I will be reviewing my options to cancel Verizon and throw out all Apple products! Has anyone noticed how no Apple rep has responded to this complaint string but they do others? I wonder if anyone has thought of a class action lawsuit? It's obvious there is an issue that is not being addressed. More money in their pockets!

Jan 28, 2015 12:36 PM in response to txcp16

We're fighting same issues with AT& with a 5S, their solution is O just upgrade his package..**** no.

With his 4 the average monthly data for 24 mnts was 1.72GB, new iphone 5s 12-15-14, on 12-18 data was over 3gb plan, cycle restarted 1-11 and on 1-19 again over the 3gb amount. I've turned everything I know to turn off and have been reading like crazy... On 12-15-14 me and wife upgraded to a 6 and 6+, my data is .9 and hers is 1.3....My next step is to do a fresh install on his..



.APPLE this is TOTALLY Unacceptable, Please address and fix this issue. And no it is NOT an isolated incident..Use the search options like we do..

Jan 29, 2015 1:34 AM in response to Mitton79

Hi


I have an iPhone 6 and 4GB data each month through Vodafone in the UK. I use Wifi at home


I don't stream TV, music or tether, yet my usage this month is about 5.5gb. This is completely out of line with my behaviour on the phone


Called Voda to discuss and the guy suggested that if the wifi signal at home was weak, the midnight iCloud backup was falling over to data and using that instead. He took at look at data peaks each night and saw 30mb here, 20meg there but nothing huge


I'm pretty tech-savvy and that explanation didnt make sense. I was under the impression that iCloud simply did not backup over data for the exact reason that it would blow up users data allowances.


I don't have background app refresh on, etc


I did notice that in the 'Mobile' section of settings, it says 'Use Mobile Data For' then lists all my apps - most of the buttons are turned to ON. Thing is, what are those usage figures below the apps? Twitter using 10.7GB??? No way! (See attached)


Anyone know of any tools that would allow me to monitor intra-day data usage, or, any suggestions as to why usage could be so mad?


Cheers, L

User uploaded file

Jan 29, 2015 3:09 AM in response to liamski

Data monitor on the App Store is what I use. As well as metering your mobile and WiFi data and presenting the results separately it also shows you the locations of all the mobile cells where data was used over a 2, 14 and 30 day period.


Also see my post earlier about turning off mobile data for all services that don't require it like on demand tv streaming services. Automatic updates should also be restricted to wifi only.


FYI the 10.7 gb used by Twitter will be since you started using the phone but even if you sent a lot of tweets it seems excessive.

Jan 29, 2015 3:22 AM in response to liamski

That's possible. I listen to Tune In radio on Wifi and after one massive data surge i noticed that my router sometimes drops the Internet connection. I theorised that this was causing the phone to flip over to mobile data. Lots of stuff goes on in the background these days as well. It's an eyeopener when you install a network monitor like little snitch on a Mac and see how many obscure system services are nonchalantly chatting to remote servers. Some of these may be essential but judging by the number I've blocked without even remotely affecting system performance i suspect few of them are

Jan 29, 2015 7:57 AM in response to AppleSucks99

By LTE radio i presume you mean what we in the UK call 4G.


I haven't disabled mine and my data usage is back to normal.


I've had this phone a year now, on 4G, and the problem only started for me in earnest in September, about the same time as the Yosemite beta programme ended and i enabled iCloud Drive on my iMac. J'accuse iCloud Drive!


i've noticed that people with iPhones but with Windows PCs - so no iCloud Drive - don't appear to be jinxed by this problem as much as Mac Users.


Turning off 4G will probably reduce the data leakage in the same way that reducing blood flow to a punctured artery will stop catastrophic bleeding because it physically can't handle the same data throughput but that doesn't mean you've found the source of the problem nor is it necessarily a viable fix. If you are paying for 4G you should be able to take advantage of the speed offered without worrying about it using vast amounts of excess data.

Jan 31, 2015 10:39 AM in response to Eltham Jones

It seems that prior to iPhone 6 and iOS 8, the phones would automatically use wifi preferentially over cellular data. Now with the 6 phones and iOS 8, the phone will look for the fastest connection and connect to that. Cellular data, especially using LTE and if the available wifi is an older or outdated, is often faster than wifi, thus that is what the phone connects to. This is so stupid - what dopey Apple engineer didn't think this one through. Apple, you must change this so that a 6 phone will use wifi first, and only if no wifi available will it then use cellular data. I have done all the usual things to reduce data usage. Am experimenting now with keeping cellular data on but disabling LTE. I am hoping this will mean that most times the wifi is faster and thus will force the phone to choose that. However, the solution is an update from Apple fixing this.

Apple, please just acknowledge the problem and let us know you are working on a fix.

IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

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