IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

Like Flutt3r my draining problem is also with "Time & Location". I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.0.2/8.1 with Pephone and my mother has an iPhone 4 with iOS 7 and she has the same problem with "Time & Location" I'm puzzled.

Deyve,

The use cellular data setting on the Settings/Cellular page doesn't keep one from telling the phone to download an app using cellular data. What it does do is tell apps already on a phone to not use cellular data, such as a music streaming application. So it is understandable that with wifi turned off you could download an app, since you didn't really have cellular off as the phone was not in airplane mode.

The difference between your AT&T data usage figure and your phone's figure is strange. From what AT&T says if you are on cellular and move into wifi range the phone continues to use cellular until the song or movie or file download or whatever finishes. Turning off cellular on the settings/cellular page might not stop downloads in progress. If you switched it to airplane mode momentarily, that might do it, or the download might just resume on cellular as soon as you turn it back off. I bet restarting your phone by holding down the on/off switch and powering down entirely would clear out the fact that a download was in progress, though.

Songs use 5 MB each. Twenty 3 minute songs per hour would use 100 MB. That's why I don't stream music on cellular, it's a data hog. Movies are even worse, of course.

Deyve, my comment about 5 mb per song was in reference to your statement, "an hour of streaming music will use well over 100 mb of data". You're right, it has nothing to do with talk radio, and yes, talk radio does use less data than music would. Songs contain more information, and use more data than just talking, of course.

After a bill shock last month, after buying the iphone 6, I stopped everything on my phone from using cell data and watched my data allowance drop by 6mb in a matter of hours.

So after following the advice of Apple, I did this:

Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services - and switched everything off.

My phone has now stopped munching through my data allowance :-)

ive been in touch with Apple engineers for two weeks now, and no one has told me that, but I've implemented your solutions. I've also dobe just about everything the other guy said including shutting off ICloud altogether and that didn't work... Hoping that shutting down System Services works. (My daughter's phone had reported 1.1 GB for System Services and 1.3 GB Uninstalled Apps. I was like @How can apps that aren't installed cause a data drain??") Only thing I left on was Find My iPhone. My phone is not being affected too badly (unlike my daughter's 9 GB spike), but I'm getting charges every 6 hours. I haven't even used 0.5 GB yet, but almost 0.3 is coming from the charges every 6 hours.

Melissa,

If you have an app on a phone and it uses cell data the app and its data use since the last time you clicked on "Reset Statistics" show up next to the app name, where there are toggles to switch individual apps' cell data use off if one is using more data than you'd like. If you uninstall an application, the figure that was showing up in the list of apps moves to "uninstalled apps". The figure on "uninstalled apps" should only increase if you uninstall another app.

Thank you Jinva. I knew about the amount of data used being shown by the app, although it doesn't explain HOW that much data was used... She had 2.6 GB used by the App Store, when she only downloaded one app -- and 2.5 GB by YouTube when she shouldn't have incurred any because she was on wifi.

The Uninstalled Apps 1+ GB also confused me because we activated her phone and she used her backed up stuff from iTunes as a source of contacts, apps, etc. Through iTunes she chose what apps to put on the phone and she didn't transfer most of the apps she had on her last phone. It wasn't like she put everything on the new phone and then deleted each of them, you know what I mean? But thanks for the thorough explanation. I never even wanted to know all this stuff but I'm getting a crash course! I think the settings that come default on the IOS should work and not drain your data... But silly me, I guess!

In exactly 2 weeks, I've used 0.501 GB of data. I can attribute 0.275 GB directly to the every 6 hours data charges. Meaning I've only used 0.226 GB or less... Sad when the every 6 hour charges actually exceed what you're using!

I had this feature off already and still my iPhone 6 burned through 2GB of data in 15 mins. I called ATT and told them while their network is fast, it's not that fast. the neat thing about ios8 is that can can get an idea when apps were updated and their sizes. iTunes and iCloud on cellular was turned off and my iPhone burned through 200 mb of data while on the phone with ATT.

I downloaded an app called My Data Manager and in a short period of time showed only 17KB while data jumped another 20MB according to ATT. So something is messed up because I don't have anything that would use that much data.

Have had the Iphone6 in my granddaughters hands for 3 weeks, 10 Gig "plan" (???) and with this phone and previous version 5 have blown through all 10G in a week or two and get hit up for $15 every time another gig is added. Now making a car payment for a play telephone (doesn't make calls worth a hoot, guess everyone's used to that). Has anyone had any success cancelling an AT&T "plan", telling them to shove it? Between AT&T I see either fraud or gross incompetence.

SSo I took my iPhone into ATT and they felt that it might be an issue with the IPhone so I then went to the Apple Store. They Genius thought it was probably an errant app that was causing it so we performed an erase and install and restored from iCloud on wifi so that I only got the latest versions of apps.

The issue of data burn through hasn't shown up again although it stopped shortly after I toggled Cellular Data on and off a few times last night. The erase and install was just for good measure.

Thanks F430 - had a long discussion that seemed actually very competent at the carrier (AT&T) today, told me about "Settings" "General" "Usage" and see what's doing the wild transfers. MY granddaughter will have to do without some things. It's an apple "apps" problem and phone settings problem. I still think it a conspiracy between AT&T and Apple - Apple sets the software to make these insane transfers in exchange for the carriers to peddle cheap Chinese play telephones for $650 a pop. My "plan" (I use NO data) to day is working on the 19th gig for this month! Bill will be $300 this month for a play phone that can't make a decent call, but enables music on horrid speakers and videos on a screen the size of a deck of cards. THIS IS HIGH TECH??

Separate note to anyone - will getting rid of the Iphone and using a Samsung or whatever reduce "data" to something reasonable?

Safari cellular data usage when idle is the biggest problem - even after all tabs are closed Safari continues to leech data . Switched to Mercury browser - problem went away for now (and got free ad-blocking in the process). This is happening on iOS 8.1/iPad Air 2. Used up more in 10 days than I ever used in a month.

Get rid of the Apple phone - it's either incompetent programming, or a scam between Apple and the service carriers particulatily AT&T and Verizon). 2-1/2 days into current period and 2 gigs have been used already (of 10!!!) by a girl in school all day and sleeping all night. It's unethical, if not fraud.

So, I've done this:

- turned off everything under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services (except Fine My Phone)

- turned off almost everything under Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services that I didn't think needed to know my location

- under Settings -> Cellular, turning 'Use Cellular Data' off for anything I don't need to use when I'm not on wifi

- log out of game centre

- stop iCloud Drive from using cellular data

- turned off all notifications for everything except Phone and Messages

- replaced Safari with Mercury (I don't know yet if this has had any difference yet)

It has definitely made a huge difference and I'm back down to using an acceptable amount of data, well under my allowance.

I love this phone, I don't want to get rid of it, so I'm happier that I've stopped it from using all my data up!