IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

I too am facing the same thing with my iPhone 5 16GB

I left the phone alone and connected to the wifi after upgrading to iOS 8 and two hour later I got an SMS from my provider that I have went through all 500MB of my data allocation!

The phone was idle! Checking through the Cellular Data Usage I saw that Document & Sync in System Services used up 350MB within the hour!

I disabled a lot of the apps Cellular Data options and disabled many iCloud stuff. I resetted Cellular Data Usage and then I purchased a further 500MB and left the phone idle again. When I went to check the phone after 15 minutes, Document & Sync has eaten up 35MB within that time span!

WHat THE HECK is GOING ON?!?

Mitton: have you tried iTunes restore / clean install ? Sometimes a corrupt OTA or backup file is to blame. Or there might be something wrong with your carrier updated settings (which they would have to release a new one).

my iPad is working fine with iOS 8. I did a clean install and had to put back all apps manually. But i am getting better battery life and no problems with Bluetooth, wifi or LTE signals.

I think the problem is with Settings>iCloud option. Depending on what options are turned on, I think it could be pushing a lot to the Cloud. Under iCloud Drive there is also an option to allow apps to store documents and data in the Cloud. I turned this off.

After upgrading to the new IOS8, I noticed that my data plan just skyrocketed, and started getting those annoying text messages from AT&T about how I was eating the data like crazy, it went from 600MB to 900MB like in 15 minutes, and of course that I was getting charge $20 for it. After my second attempt trying to get an answer from AT&T I was told that the new IOS8 will open the gates to all your data (GPS, service location, etc) and received some tips on how to prevent that, try these options, I just did it myself, but not been able to pinpoint if this will stop, anyway I thought to share this info:

1) Settings>General>iCloud>Documents & Data... Scroll down and have the customer turn off Use¿Cellular Data
2) Settings>iTunes & App Store> Scroll down to AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS and have the customer turn off MUSIC, APPS, UPDATES
3) Settings>General>Background App Refresh (turn off any apps that the customer doesn't want to automatically refresh with their information)
4) Settings>Privacy>Location Services (the customer will see all the apps that have the GPS enabled(Everything should be turned off except Setting Time Zone)

I hope this helps

Good luck

I have this issue to. I believe its a Mail connected issue. Check your battery usage and your Apps Cellular usage and I bet you see the majority of usage is from Mail (background activity).

Try setting all email accounts to Fetch. Hopefully the good people at Apple will resolve this soon.

i have the exact same problem and my data has reset on 21Sept and my usage has reached 1.6GB?! That's almost a months worth of data!! I've already switched off my background apps refresh and automatic downloads and cellular usage for almost all apps, except for whatsapp. It's not possible to use up so much data just by texting?! Solve my problem pleaseT_T

As posted above, I had the same problems and followed these recommendations from AT&T, so far so good, my data now seems under control....

1) Settings>General>iCloud>Documents & Data... Scroll down and have the customer turn off Use¿Cellular Data
2) Settings>iTunes & App Store> Scroll down to AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS and have the customer turn off MUSIC, APPS, UPDATES
3) Settings>General>Background App Refresh (turn off any apps that the customer doesn't want to automatically refresh with their information)
4) Settings>Privacy>Location Services (the customer will see all the apps that have the GPS enabled(Everything should be turned off except Setting Time Zone)

Good Luck

I am having the same issue. I have blown through my 2GB data cap with minimal usage on my part. I checked the "System Services" tab under "Cellular" and it showed 148MB was used for "iTunes Accounts" since Sunday evening (9/21) when I reset the statistics. Today, three days later, I am shocked to see several notifications from Verizon notifying me that I am at 90% of my data usage for the month. I reset the statistics again a mere 6 hours ago, and am already at 46.2MB of "iTunes Accounts" being used. I don't have iTunes Match, and iTunes and App Store downloads are disabled over cellular. My cycle restarts on Oct 6. Looks like I will be paying for Apple's mistake, literally.

My battery like also has never been worse.

iOS 8? More like iOS "ate" all of my data and battery life.

iPhone 5s, Verizon, 16GB, iOS 8.0

iPhone 5, updated to iOS 8, having the same problems as everyone else. I've already blown through 2gb of data. I've had an iPhone since originally launched and have never used more then a 1gb for the entire billing cycle. Called AT&T and they said call Apple. Called Apple and they said they have not received any reports of this problem. I told them about this thread and was told each person could be different. I find it highly unlikely that we are all having the same issue with iOS 8 and it not be a software issue. Contact Apple so they create ticket numbers and see that they need to fix this problem. Is costing me extra money in data. I've had to shut off all cellular data. I've never had to do this and that's not a fix to this problem.

I suspect its iCloud storage, sync'ing over cellular. There isn't a switch to control whether or not it uses cellular data, and once I enabled iCloud storage, I'm seeing large volumes of data being used that weren't in the past. Its the only thing I can find that would explain how my data usage has gone up by GB's in the last cycle.

I've been on the phone with Apple for 3 hours today. They refuse to believe that this is their problem even when I showed them my carrier's data logs that show the high data usage started after iOS8. I also showed them screenshots of my phone after I resent the cellular data counter to 0, and 30 minutes later (while on WiFi for the whole time) there was cell data usage.

They had me reinstall my phone from a backup and this is still happening.

I have this problem on o2. They said at midnight the day after the update it used all of my 750mb!

Unfortunately for me it was 1 day after my allowance reset! So now a full month without data! Where do we need to go to complain?

My data plan just rolled over yesterday, and I've used .5 gb already I went into settings > cellular and The App store app used 600+- mb and I go to updates and add up all the updates sizes and guess what.... Even though it looks like the setting " use cellular data for automatic downloads" is turned off in settings > iTunes & AppStor. I was in my home with wifi all day it didn't use wifi to automatically update apps. So I think I just turned off using cellular in the AppStore all together. Hopefully this will get fixed. Btw I am running iOS 8.0.2.

I was having the same problem. It started on Friday 9/26. I hadn't updated to 8.0.2 yet but I was getting messages from my provided telling me that my data was nearing it's limit. First at 65%, then to 90% within the next hour. I reset my cellular usage statistic and quickly found out that it's the Mail app. It's using ~10MB per minute. No explanation. I'm not sure if it's a bug with the app itself, or a bug with the mail protocol between Google and the iPhone. This entire experience has been extremely frustrating.

I've just got an email today from T-Mobile (UK) that I've used up 90% of my data usage, I've never had this before and found this thread. Like everyone else since update to ios8. Was going to update to 8.0.2, but not sure it will now make any difference seeing what everyone else has written, doesn't appear to just be a US problem!