IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

Hi, I've been having a similar problem since getting my iPhone 6 as well.

My usage started exceeding 300MB per day, which is impossible given the amount of data that I use on a normal basis.

I wound up micromanaging my data usage today and realised that the data drain is coming from "System Services" ---> "Documents & Sync".

The data use appeared suddenly in between my scheduled hourly checks, as a lump sum of 277MB.

I called Apple and there is nothing I can do to turn it off. The Apple service staff recommended that I back up the phone, then restore the phone again from that back up.

I'm not really clear from reading the thread - will restoring from a current backup reintroduce the problem to the phone?

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

A few minutes ago I traced the culprit for the exorbitant cellular data use.

I watched a 4-and-a-half-minute video on facebook, which I actually stopped at about the 2 minute mark. Minutes later I got a warning from Dataman Pro that I was approaching the limit of my mb allowance for the month. I checked the hourly usage, only to find this:

178 Mb down the drain for a 2 minute video. 😮 Something's terribly wrong here.

By the way, I have the video auto-play set to off.

Still no idea what service uses so much data.

So i installed Little Snitch on my Mac and watched the traffic.

I found the syncdefaultsd service, which uses about 2 GB traffic in 2 days. Perhaps someone can figure out if this is the reason why my iPhone also have so much traffic.

I deactivated my KeyChain-Snyc in iCloud and then re-activated it (on my Mac).

Before deactivating "syncdefaultsd" had traffic all 10 - 25 sec, after re-activating "syncdefaultsd" has no traffic since 5 min. WOW !

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Now, last activity is about 8 min ago.

Perhaps, this is my solution.

in response to dooror

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

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What does number 3 change when you put it to off?

What setting changed since ios7?

a) Something else I just noticed is that the "Stocks" app that comes with all Apple iOS installations is pre-loaded with about a dozen stocks and "Background App Refresh" to use cellular data is defaulted on.

If you never looked at the Stocks App before, surprise, it's been chewing up data in the background since you activated the phone.

Must be turned off in: Settings>General>Background App Refresh

You also can delete all the stocks on the list by opening the Stocks app and using its settings. Stocks app does not appear in the alphabetical list of apps that you find in the main Settings screen.

b) Despite have Notifications turned off for Tips and iTunes Store, this morning I had notifications from both of those.

It seriously looks like settings I make are not sticking, and are being changed either by the app, by unexpected incoming Push notifications or simply that the setting never 'took' in the first place.

The posting from nuno.bett in this thread helped me prevent dozens of apps from using cellular data, but the solution is a bit technical and probably scary to a few people. I had a lot of apps that I could not get to stop using cellular data. I would switch them off, but Settings always showed them as switched on. As it turned out, they had a "2" in the database nuno.bett mentions, where they should only have a 0 or 1 (for off/on to use cellular). And also as it turns out, most of the apps stuck on 2 were apps that come as part of iOS and can't be deleted. (Like Newsstand, Game Center, App Store...) If you're not afraid of manually editing and then uploading a config database file to your phone, this solution is great for resetting all apps to be Cellular off. You can practice editing the file a few times without actually sending the file back to your phone, if you're not confident.

After restoring the changed file back to your phone, it takes about 4 minutes for the phone to restore and reboot. Then you can then go back into Settings and set each app individually to use Cellular on if you need.

I Have had the same problems. I stayed on 8.1.1 for a while, then eventually updated 8.1.2 figuring it would solve the problem, but no it didn't.

SO I was wonderong if it had something to do with icoud drive. I turned off both my iMac, and MacBook pro for 3 days. Now documents & sync only used 4mb of data. As soon as I turned on today, 2 hrs later, I was up to 60.5mb.

so for now, I just shut iCloud drive off all computers and iOS devices, and it seems to work!

DAng, I wish apple would solve this problem, or at least start a reimbursement programs for all the data we have used

you might want to turn off cellular data in two other places in addition to individual apps under settings / cellular, if you haven't already done so, and see what happens:

1. Settings / ICloud / Documents & Data, toggle "use cellular data" to off
2. Settings / Itunes & Apps Store, toggle "use cellular data" to off

That's all I did with my iphone 5 on ios8, and my data usage is normal on that. With my wife's iphone 6, I have all the apps turned on for cellular data use, and those two settings turned off, and her data usage is normal, i.e. averaging 22 mb a day. But with her phone, I erased all data and settings and set it up as a new phone as well, and did NOT restore from backup but, rather, added back the apps from ITUNES, which might have something to do with it. Oh, and I also have Automatically Back Up / Icloud turned off (you do that with the phone hooked up to your computer with ITunes open), but that's only supposed to happen, even if you have it turned on, if you're on wifi, I think, so maybe that is not needed.

Okay,picked up my brand new Iphone 6 Plus, upgraded ios to 8.1, two days ago and total cell data usage to date is a mere 20 MB. No inordinate data charges, in other words, unlike my wife's Iphone 6 which in the first two days used 250MB of data, until I adjusted it. YMMV, but here is what I did:

On first setting up in the store

1. set it up as a new phone
2. declined use of the ICLOUD to avoid cell data use on the way home.

Later on that evening, I signed on to ICLOUD, loaded all the apps from ITUNES onto the phone. Set the various settings for cellular data as follows:

1. Settings/Icloud, Notes is on, Find my IPhone is on, everything else is off.
2. Itunes and apps store, show all music and video purchases is off, music apps, books, updates automatic downloads is off, use cellular data is off, suggested apps my apps and apps store based on location is off.
3. Settings/Cellular, "master switch" "Use Cellular Data' is on, individual apps that shouldn't be using cellular data are off (like some games and such), but calendar, contacts, facebook, gmail, gps drive, and notes are on. Spotify is off for cellular data; I make the songs I want to play while out and about available offline.

Since I'm not using the icloud to backup things constantly, documents & sync and documents & data under settings/cellular/system services and settings/icloud don't even show up. That was the cellular data hog on my wife's iphone.

YMMV as always. Hope this helps.

Your situation sounds very similar to mine. We've seen some improvement during this billing cycle by turning off LTE on the iPhone6s, so they are using 4G as on the older models. The improvement was dramatic on one of our 2 iPhone6s, and noticeable on the other. AT&T told me LTE is very sensitive -- or something -- and will kick in at the slightest variation in wifi, which might explain your point #1, " Even though I am connected to the wifi on my computer, my phone is dropping the wifi connection at home..."

We also turned cellular data off for many apps, trying to limit it to those we found essential. Spotify was the biggest consumer, followed by social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, etc.). You can find out what's hogging data in your Cellular settings.

I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind:

1. If I understand your post, you wiped your phone clean and started fresh vs. restoring from backup. So did you have to download all of your apps individually from the appstore? And then how did you get contacts, photos, etc. back?
2. What documentation did you use with AT&T to get the overage charges reversed? So far we haven't run over but you never know ...

Same problem here on iPhone 6, AT&T, iOS 8.4.1

I've gone from an average use of about 1GB per month to almost 6GB this month without changing my phone use at all.

My data usage according to AT&T has been spiking (between 10MB and 600MB) at exactly 6AM, 12PM, 3PM, and 9PM. For two of those spikes, I'm on wifi and for all of them, I'm not doing any streaming or even really using anything on my phone. I've turned off the following and will post back if it helps:

• background app refresh for almost all apps
• Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services ->: everything but find my iphone OFF
• all iCloud drive stuff, including documents and data
• icloud backups and everything but keychain and find my iphone
• handoff
• almost all location services
• all app store automatic downloads
• fetch (for mail)

that said, it's very stupid to have to turn off all of this (expensive and hi-tech) functionality just to keep the phone from leaking cellular data.

I am encountering the same problem with my iPhone 4S!

Every application uses only few MB (including System Services), but I had already to pay for 7 (!!!) extra data bundles (2€ each).

I tried restarting the iPhone, closing all background apps but the problem is still not resolved! I have vodafone italy as provider.

Every kind of solution for this problem is welcome, because at least for me the update on iOS didn't remain "for free"!

Thanks,

Alex

Have the exact same issue.

Not using the phone and keep on getting notification that my cellular bundle has depleted.

Have reset the statistics to try and find the culprit app, but can't find anything.

The current period statistics at the top shows many cellular MBs used within moments of resetting the stats - even with the phone in standby. The usage stats only show cellular data usage for a select few apps and system services - but these are all for really small figures (18 KB, 43 KB, 11 KB, 11 KB and 110 KB for system services.) They do not add up to the total usage at all!

Cannot understand what is using the data?