Q: IOS 8 High Cellular Data Usage

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.

has anybody done anything about this crazy data usage?

is there a way to fix?

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.

This worked for my iPhone 4S: Settings - General - Reset - Reset network settings. The usage dropped from 80 MB per hour to practically zero.

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!

I Have the iPhone 6 vince...

I Have had the same problem when bill cycled last month. 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 Crd was issued at the AT&T Store and it reprevisioned my account it has been fine. I had the same problem in July as well. 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!!!!    . 

HOpe this little tidbit timid it on top of the other fixes will help someone out!!

I'm having this problem with EE (formerly Orange) in the UK.

It came to a head two weeks ago. I'm on a 4gb cap and two days after my data refreshed my mobile data stopped working. i rang them and they told me I'd run out of data.  i told them that this was impossible; that just two days previously my data had refreshed and - based on my last refresh of their data meter on my phone - I had only used a few megabytes, but they were adamant that my phone had chewed through almost four gigabytes of mobile data in a matter of hours on a saturday morning. "you'd be surprised how easy it is to do this on 4G" was their only response. 

This has only been happening for two months In June I went to Scotland and stayed in a friends log cabin with no wifi. I only had 4G and 3G. I was tethering my laptop, downloading images and uploading photoshop files, watching you tube videos and streaming internet radio and didn't get anywhere near my data limit; then in September huge chunks of data started going missing without any explanation.

Following the last debacle, EE kindly topped up my data until I could get to the bottom of it. i downloaded an app called DataMonitor from the App store. This independently monitors your data consumption and can separate cellular and wifi data, rendering the results separately.

For the first few days my data consumption was ridiculously low. Then I went to the movies one night. My data monitor showed that I had used just under 1.5gb of data at this point. I had my hotspot switched off and didn't use my phone until the following morning except to look up the cast of the movie on IMDB.

The following day when I checked the data monitor it reported that my phone had gone through over 2GB of cellular data!  Overnight.  While I was on WiFi for most of that time...

The app also shows you the location where the data was used (mast locations etc.) Two locations near my home had delivered a  few kb of data. One had deliver 0.9mb. another had delivered around 235 kb. There is no way the cellular data consumed at these locations could possibly add up to 2GB.

I really don't know what is going on. The rep from EE advised me to reset my phone and upgrade to iOS8, but the problem seems to have got worse.

I also use my phone for tethering, as it's primarily a business tool.  Apple Mail just used nearly 350mb in a couple of hours churning through various synchronisation and caching operations. 

I've now turned off background app refresh, mobile data for all but essential services, iCloud drive and my phone's data use has dropped to microscopic levels without actually affecting day to day functions, but I'm still left with the problem of tethering. i used to be able to tether with just 1.5GB of data but if Mail keeps chomping through data at this rate it's not going to be practical to use it...

Anyone got any ideas as to how to stop that? Although I regularly delete spam and unwanted messages, my email account is a very busy one and gmail server synchronisation still seems to use massive quantities of data.

Update: October to November consumed (unlikely) 18.4 gig!  Bill from AT&T was $310.00.  No deal.  After 45-50 minutes on the phone (a real phone, not a toy phone) I got nowhere.  Went to an Apple Store in Louisiana, large major store, not a reseller or booth in the mall.  Had to wait 90 minutes for service.  Eventually got to explain the dilemma. Courteous store tech support empathized, offered to "check the phone" in the back room.  Learned during our nearly 50 minute session that the phone CANNOT show which "app" is using the data.  General > Settings > Usage on I6 only gives battery usage per app, not data transfer. Nowhere else on the phone did either, according to the store. After a lot of hemming and hawing they actually offered to exchange the phone, no charge, with a new-in-the-box I6.  The even assisted with transferring files stored on the old phone to the new phone.  That was surprising, but, after hours with AT&T and at Apple, no solution. No leads, no advice from the service provider or Apple. Just "oh well."  Any updates out there for killing this ripoff?

I also suspected that there was some kind of shady business going on; not with Apple but with my carrier, EE, because my data requirements are low and the excessive data usage always seemed to happen towards the end of the month when I had huge amounts of data to spare; then, out of the blue, about 80% of my remaining data would vanish into thin air and the offer to sell me more data would come in.

This has only started happening since August. Up until then I was using my phone exactly as I am now, tethering without a problem and average a little under 3GB per month.

The app I installed however shows that the data is passing through my phone and doing so in massive, unpredictable bursts, even when I'm on wifi apparently.

Personally, I don't think Apple care enough about anything outside of Apple to be in any kind of conspiracy with carriers. I think simply design their operating systems and their applications to take full advantage of the fastest and most advanced hardware and connectivity available and don't consider the lowest common denominator - i.e. those of us who are on limited bandwidth, older hardware etc.  These days almost every device has some built in internet dependence to the point where some elements of an operating system won't even work properly without an internet connection.

In this case I suspect that the problem has been caused by an update to iOS which turned on background app refresh for all apps. Turning this off hasn't affected my phone at all, but the phone's data used has dropped dramatically, the only problem now is the Mail app while tethering.

AyeAye,

Settings/Cellular is cellular data usage, by application that used it.  If an app doesn't show up there, then it didn't use any cellular data since the last time the list was cleared using the "Reset Statistics" button.  Some of the apps that use data, however, are somewhat cryptic as to what is actually going on with the data use, and these are under Settings/Cellular/"System Services.  These are the apple applications that are built into the os of the phone, and I don't know of any definitive list describing just what they all are.  Some are pretty obvious, like "gamecenter", where as others are perplexing, like "Documents and Sync".  As far as I have seen, btw, the big culprit is "Documents and Sync" which, I think, is used a LOT if one has the phone set up to back itself up to a cloud drive automatically using cellular data.  But I think it includes the "Notes" app too, which of course has "documents".

THANK you jinva2014.  I know extremely little about Iphones; this one is in the hands on my granddaughter. Have never been given that direction before.! Will see what we can do.