Huge Cellular Data Use / Drain, While On Wi-Fi

Question

Level 1

42 points

Huge Cellular Data Use / Drain, While On Wi-Fi

Anyone else got this? I'm very concerned as my 8gb / month data allowance is being swallowed up, and my carrier, Vodafone, just advise it must be the handset - and charge me for extra data, and Apple so far haven't diagnosed the problem...

On my iphone 5s I'm having a huge cellular data drainage problem, seen in Settings > Cellular > System Services > Docs and Sync and I'd be very surprised if there aren't many others with the same as it seems to me to be fundamentally linked to the iOS or the handset.

In the first 12 days of this billing month ( since Nov 22 ) my cellular data usage was nearly 8GB - my limit is 8GB and usually I use around 500mb of that. So I'm now paying Vodafone for extra data.

Spent a couple of hours online with Apple Support today - my cellular data usage increasing from 3mb to 30mb as we spoke - and much of the time I was on wifi.

Result was that Apple had me restore iphone as a new phone over itunes and reinstall 8.1.1 afresh; theory being that a fresh restore ( ie none of my apps, non-Apple mail accounts, or media on the phone ) should clear anything that may be causing Settings > Cellular > System Services > Docs and Sync to show high data usage.

But with Settings > Cellular Data switched on, and no apps open or any activity on my part, I'm seeing he exact same thing - around 45mb of data use in Settings > Cellular > System Services > Docs and Sync in less than an hour.

Feels like the phone has been hacked in some way.

Update the following day:

I've kept the phone on the full restore (ie not reverted to any of my backups, as I had planned ) today - kept a record of the apps i installed and Settings changes made... the data drain has continued, so in Settings > Cellular > System Services > Docs and Sync the data use is now 108mb - and this is while being on Wifi the whole day except for around 30 mins walking to / from a restaurant.

I've seen this iPhonedata drain issue raised elsewhere on the web, dating back to 2012 - but the posts I see never update to a conclusion.

Another talk to Apple tomorrow. If anyone has had this issue and resolved it I'd really like to hear from them!

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 3.4GHz, 512GB SSD, 2TB SATA, 32gb

Posted on Dec 7, 2014 3:16 PM

Reply

Answer 1

happysailor Author

Level 1

42 points

Dec 8, 2014 4:02 AM in response to happysailor

I just spoke to Apple again and am visiting Genius Bar with expectation that this will be diagnosed as a hardware fault that requires a replacement.

Reply

Answer 2

Dec 9, 2014 3:58 AM in response to happysailor

happysailor, any news? I've got my cellular data turned off for the moment, really annoying for a "smart phone".

Reply

Answer 3

happysailor Author

Level 1

42 points

Dec 9, 2014 4:14 AM in response to paul_nyrup

MY appointment at Genius Bar is tomorrow so will update then. Meanwhile my Cellular > Documents and Sync data is now 256mb since the phone restore on Saturday pm. Have been away from wifi for maybe an hour or two In that time.

Reply

Answer 4

happysailor Author

Level 1

42 points

Dec 11, 2014 2:21 AM in response to happysailor

I took the phone to Apple Genius yesterday - there was a suggestion that the solution may be to turn off iCloud Drive, but I felt strongly that it's a hardware issue and the phone was eventually replaced. In the 24 hours since then, ( on wifi except for the journey home) the new phone shows 27mb of data use. Will update if this increases dramatically.

Reply

Answer 5

happysailor Author

Level 1

42 points

Dec 15, 2014 3:30 AM in response to happysailor

Further update - at weekend, I continued to see data drain through Documents & Sync, - on my brand new replacement iPhone 5s from Apple - so went back to Vodafone as it seemed it may be a problem at their end again. Result was a tariff change form my 8GB limit ( I have always un till this issue only used less than 1GB ) to a 10GB limit that is Unlimited for 90 days - so that will solve the issue for me until Apple or Vodafone sorts out - if indeed they are addressing it at all. No-one at either organisation claimed any knowledge of the problem.

One thing did occur to me after my hours of calls, online chats and store visits: I am a 52yr old male living in central London who's able to "fight my corner" in a case like this - but what happens if you're less equipped to deal with such problems - maybe not tech-savvy, older, infirm... really think this is a huge issue that Apple / data providers should address urgently.

Reply

Answer 6

Dec 15, 2014 3:46 AM in response to happysailor

I haven't been able to solve the problem yet but I think I'm getting closer. I've noticed that the data drain stops when my iMac is turned off, and that the data drain on the iPhone starts immediately once the iMac is turned on!!

I turned off my iMac on Friday and had no data drain all weekend. As soon as I turned the iMac on today the iPhone "Documents & Sync" started to go crazy again. I logged out of iCloud on the iMac and the drain on the iPhone stopped! So, I don't think this is an iPhone hardware problem at all!

To me it seems it's a bug in the iCloud service. Although all the configurations on the iPhone are saying that it should not use 3G, and that it should use the WiFi, it still uses the 3G somehow for some sort of synchronisation with my iMac. This is clearly a bug as I don't have anything on my iCloud drive and I have set Calendar/Contacts and Notes to sync only on WiFi. Apple please sort this one out. For now I'm switching cellular data off on the phone when I'm working on the iMac. It's the only solution at the moment.

Reply

Answer 7

clops

Level 1

0 points

Jan 29, 2015 1:27 AM in response to happysailor

I am facing the same problems since the upgrade to 8.1. Here is what seemed to reduce the bandwidth usage by a factor of 10:

Goto Settings -> iCloud -> iCloud Drive -> scroll down to the bottom -> Disable "Use Celluar Data"

Usage for the day so far only 2.8Mb (still a lot for nothing, but better than the usual drain).

Reply

Answer 8

Mar 19, 2015 10:44 AM in response to clops

Mine was already disabled (iCloud Drive, Disabled "Use Cellular Data", but somehow i've burned through almost 200mb in 4 days. Running 8.2...

I just tried shutting of some of the apps above that in the list (although it really shouldn't matter).

Reply

Answer 9

Mar 28, 2015 2:17 PM in response to Christopher Twomey

I have run into this problem over the last couple of weeks. iPhone 6 plus, seems to have occurred after upgrading to 8.2. Apple suggested to me could be hardware issue, reluctant to believe this. Has to be software? I own an iMac and Mac Mini Will try and shut them down and see if that helps. Anybody else managed to fix this?

Reply

Answer 10

Apr 1, 2015 3:19 AM in response to happysailor

I worked out the issue affecting me. I noticed like many other people it seems that turning off my iMac stopped data being downloaded on my phone over cellular. Since it was Documents and Sync I assumed it must be an iCloud glitch, so turned off iCloud on my iMac, this also had the affect of stopping the excessive data usage on my iPhone.

To be safe I did a permissions repair at this point and a restart.

I then re signed in to iCloud on my iMac and 3 days later the issues still hasn't re-occured. My guess is that my iMac was "uploading" something to iCloud, and failing, but my iPhone was perhaps seeing new sync data and constantly truing to download these "new" file.

Hope this helps for anybody who has similar issues.

Reply

Answer 11

lapgye

Level 1

9 points

Dec 2, 2017 1:09 PM in response to happysailor

Hello, I have the same problem. Is there a solution for this? Apple doesn´t help. Thanks.

Reply