Q: IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

I Have had the same problem June, July and August of last year. I was 1 day I to my billing cycle and I used over 125% of my data. I was like you I have been with AT&T for almost 20 years and I was ****** at the extra charges when my phone was turned off and this happened every month! I did however get AT&T to credit me all the overages every month. I got a new 5S and I did everything that was suggested but I alaso had AT&T issue a new Sim Card on 5S and had my account reprevisioned and I haven't had the problem since. I have since upgraded to the iPhone 6 Plus and (knock on wood)  everything has been fine! once that new Sim Card was issued at the AT&T Store and it reprevisioned my account and it has been fine. We Never knew what was causing my data to send like that and since I upgraded to the 6 Plus I have lucky not and ANY kind of problems SO FAR! LOL!!!!    . My personal conclusion was my phone was hit with a power surge even thou it was plugged into a surge protector Cuz the back of my phone was so hot when I took the lifeproof case off it actually burned and blistered my finger. The battery was over heating and the heat damaged the SIM Card. I have had no problems with IOS 8.3 YET! My 6Plus has worked perfectly since I got it in October. I hope this helps you out!

I agree. Apple has gone to **** since Jobs passed away. I just got an iPad Air and have had it for only 10 days. Verizon just notified me that I was up to my 2GB allowance.  How can this be???  I tried all the suggestions. Turned of LTE, turned off cellular, had no apps using cellular data, etc. ICloud is off. The only thing that in on, is my home WiFi.  So, I refreshed my current data usage and went online using Wifi for 15 seconds to watch a news video. 9 kb ( I know it's not much) but why did it use ANY cellular date at all????  I want to return this phone but I'm sure I won't be able to. Apple needs to fix this NOW!

@ Rich so you think it's the SIM card?

I forgot to mention that in my 2.5 hours at ATT, I had them change SIM card. It has not helped. I am in danger of going over my 5 GB limit this month and that is with vigilant use of the phome. Either ATT is stealing my data or Apple has screwed up my phone with an update.

Updating to iOS8.3 does NOT help. I've been using iPhone and Smartone as provider and has never had any problems with data usage. I hv a 6GB plan and has never used up all my data EVER! My billing cycle is on 21st each month. After resetting my iPhone 6+ network settings, I've been getting data usage messages alerting me that my usage is near my limit. The last reset was 21/4, today (28/4) I got an SMS saying I've exceeded my 6GB limit and will need to purchase addition data. I checked cellular data usage and it had used 75GB under current period in just 7 days. I don't stream anything or download anything on my phone. I clicked into system services under cellular and just documents & data itself had used 4.4GB!!

Reading the posts from this forum, I tried turning off everything from iCloud Drive to Mail to anything that runs in the background (location services, background app refresh...). I didn't purchase any new cellular data so I shouldn't have any new data available since my 6GB was already used up (no clue how???). I just connected through wifi. I reset my statistics under cellular, and just left my phone sitting there doing nothing. In 15 mins, it says the cellular data usage for the current period was already 57.6KB! I don't even have data on my phone as I didn't purchase any extra!!! Where is my phone using data from?

Apple NEEDS to fix this! How can this issue be ignored if so many people are having the same problem! Ever since the updates to iOS8, it seems Apple has screwed up something new. First it was battery, then dictation didn't work, now even data usage. This is unacceptable!

A couple of weeks ago I opened a support ticket at Apple Support for this problem, after consuming 14,6 GB within a single night. A week later, a senior advisor contacted me by phone. After uploading some diag info from my iPhone, he figured out the problem probably lies in the internal "syncme" process within the AppStore application. Apple will look into it. If he contacts me with new info, I'll post it here.

Still haven't been able to resolve this issue after months and months. Had to juts bump up my data plan so I don't keep getting hit with overages. It's ridiculous. Short of texting, I don't even use data at all even under wifi anymore, and it still uses tons of data. Crazy. This is literally just insane at this point. We are all owed massive refunds as far as I'm concerned. Still getting massive nightly and random spikes of huge data usage on Verizon data tracking at times when phone is not even used. It's not even carriers fault like Verizon or sprint or whatever as so many different people seem to have this issue with different providers.

i had the same issue with my iPhone 6 so Apple performed a reset and I set it up as a a new iPhone and that solved it. However, that did not work for my daughter's iPhone 5S. I took it into Apple yesterday and they couldn't detect any issues so they performed a full firmware replacement and reset. I checked her data this morning and it hasn't consumed any more.

If you have AT&T you can download detailed usage reports so you can see when data was consumed and how much. Unfortunately, it does not show what was consuming the data. One thing the AT&T rep suggested was turning off autoloading of videos on cellular when on Facebook. This can consume quite a bit of data even if you don't click to view a video.

Quick update - my daughter's iPhone 5S just consumed 90 mb of data since I dropped her off at school. She said she was tying up a story in Pages and sending a few iMessage texts and she is on wi-fi. Something is really screwy.

Thanks so much! I just wish I'd known this before my phone downloaded 2 Gigs worth of cellular data. I've never had a good upgrade on any iOS device from Apple. Now I have to pay a huge bill. Thanks Apple. If anyone in Australia wants to join me in requesting Apple refund the excess usage fees, I'd be happy to chat.

Im noticing something specific about at home broadband usage between Apple's devices. The new 802.11ac eats all the home broadband usage by 40 ping milliseconds. Using speed test . net I am normally at 22-16 ping range until one of the newer Apple iPhones is allowed in my network. It makes a big difference on different applications that I use at home that are processor limited, some missing juice on the modem and the system lags out.

The blatant abuse of the home broadband by Apple's iPhone 6 must be looked at, if it does this to home broadband imagine how quickly it can use cellular coverage data. If you notice closely your home connection will have reversed back to normal once the cellphone is not streaming video blazing fast anymore.

Im glad I got this out of my mind, I hope someone hears my query.

Im assuming all responsibility for this next post, a 2012 macbook pro sharing the home network with a iPhone 6 plus will lag on its basic operations like browsing and downloading by a decent percent, it should not be as stronger as the strongest laptop, but the engineers did that anyway. iPhone 6's antenna is using a ton of airspace until people like me start handing out red flags.

I'm so frustrated. I'm $90 into overage charges with AT&T and their only suggestion is to buy a larger data plan. I can't trade the phone in for an Android, I can't get the data bleeding to stop. It's just unconscionable that the solutions here limit the use of the phone. If I turn Cellular Data off, you can no longer send or receive MMS text messages, the iCloud was not even turned on. Something updates every 3 hours and I can't figure out what. I'm going to try a reset and see if that works. I'm not sure who has time for all of this, it's just crazy. I think a class action lawsuit is in order! 

I had to turn off all cellular data access for apps on my daughter's 5S except for the standard apps that comes with iOS. The other two iPhone 6 and iPhone 5 consume barely any data at all. We are all on the same level of iOS. Her iPhone consumed 100 mb of data yesterday while on wireless the entire day.

The three hour thing is likely just the 3 hour summary reporting by the wireless companies - it's not a sudden data surge.

I just bought an unlocked iPhone 6 from Apple to take advantage of a $45 a month plan, not realizing I'd be a victim of this as well. I've had to resort to shutting off my cellular data completely when on wifi because the iPhone decides that LTE data is better than a 25 Mbps fibre connection. I also have turned off iCloud Drive from using cellular data in addition to turning off automatic App Store downloads (both on cellular data and over wifi).

I think it's worth noting that my three year old iPhone 4s never had this issue. So what it appears to me is the phone picking LTE over wifi (absolutely absurd). I also noticed that my data usage is very much higher with LTE enabled than over a 3G network, so it seems that disabling LTE somewhat helps.

Just to note, I'm running iOS 8.3 on my iPhone so clearly the issue wasn't fixed even after seven months... And instead of paying $45 I'll be paying almost $80... Not impressed!

(PS: I have about seven email accounts linked to my iPhone mail app and I have to admit this wouldn't be the only bug with the mail app... My notification previews are all off and yet all my emails still have previews... So don't be surprised if the mail app is the issue. I've put all my emails to fetch hourly and I'll see if it helps my usage at all.)

No, the right solution is:

1) Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services ->

a) Location-Based Alerts Off

b) Location-Based iAds Off

c) Motion Calibration & Distance Off

d) Frequent Locations Off

e) All options under Product Improvement Off

2) Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> Use Cellular Data Off