Q: IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

I noticed that as well. I gave my mom my iPhone 5 yesterday and I noticed that I was able to download apps even with the "use cellular data" not selected, and the wifi turned off.

I spoke with at&t, and really got nowhere. They state that usage data is updated every 3 hours. Also, if you're on cellular and switch over to wi-fi, the cellular data usage will continue until the session is over. I informed her that upon getting anywhere with wifi, I immediately turn off the cellular data and LTE (even though I've never had to do that before), and even when I do use cellular data, the usage at&t is recording is much higher than it should be. For example, an hour of streaming music will use well over 100 mb of data. She then recommended that I do a factory reset on the phone, and take it to apple if problems persist. Currently, my device is saying that I've used 868 mb, but at&t claims I've used about 1.4 GB.

Nope... I've had stocks turned off from day one, BTW. Podcasts too. It would be nice if the problem were ONLY related to data leaking while on wi-fi but with my daughter's phone the charges were throughout the entire day AS WELL as on wifi. We were lucky and were able to return the phones and go back to the 4s, or we would've had to switch her to a plan with unlimited data. Seems to me no one is going to admit culpability for this issue or they'll be swamped with requests for reimbursement for data overages. I was again prompted to update to 8.1 by Apple -- anyone had good results with that in regard to the data??

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.

It's talk radio, so not sure how the 5 mb per song applies. AT&T's site says an hour of streaming audio is about 30 mb (0.03 GB).

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.

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.

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!

Ok, shutting down System Services has done nothing for me. I'm still getting the charges every 6 hours... Just shut off iCloud again... Not much left to shut off.

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!

Same issue here.

Got my iPhone 6 in September. Kept my 6GB data plan that I was using with my previous iPhone. Never got past 5GB in a month...now I got to 6GB usage in 20 days...that's incredible!!

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.