How will using wifi assist affect my cellular data usage?

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Level 1

6 points

How will using wifi assist affect my cellular data usage?

Wifi assist feature is alittle unclear. If I leave wifi assist on does it mean cellular data will help in the connection even for apps for which I have turned cellular data off?

Posted on Sep 29, 2015 9:12 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

sberman

Level 10

264,033 points

Sep 29, 2015 11:00 PM in response to dborg01

As stated in this page from the iPhone User Guide, if cellular data is off for a particular app, then that app can only use Wi-FI.

http://help.apple.com/iphone/9/#/iph3dd5f213

You can always verify this at Settings > Cellular which tells you how much cellular data has been used for a particular app.

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Answer 2

dborg01 Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 29, 2015 11:01 PM in response to sberman

TThanks a lot. It's the way I get it too. I'm sorry for the question, I must have missed the part you mention. Thank you again.

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Answer 3

sberman

Level 10

264,033 points

Sep 30, 2015 3:51 AM in response to dborg01

I think yours was a good question. I think the answer was not 100% glaringly stated in the literature.

Enjoy your Apple gear.

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Answer 4

dborg01 Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 30, 2015 3:59 AM in response to sberman

I rely heavily on my apple devices in the course of my life work both during teaching, for marketing and for my consultancies and i have to keep my eyes expenses as low as possible by reducing anything I don't quite need. Just didn't want to take it for granted that I won't incur charges. One minor observation is that the data used for an app seems to reflect the total data for wifi and cellular. I got apps which have cellular turned off but still show a good amount of data usage And I reset statistics every month in order to monitor my data bundle. This means that actually there is no way of knowing if an app is using cellular or not if I have wifi assist turned on or off. I do enjoy my apple gear a lot and have brought many new customers from my ict classes. Unfortunately there is no way to get a bit of a discount on my purchases though :-/

thank you for your replies...they are very helpful :-)

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Answer 5

sberman

Level 10

264,033 points

Sep 30, 2015 11:59 AM in response to dborg01

Given your last remarks, please be sure to update your iOS to version 9.0.2 which was released today. Among other things, this minor release fixes an issue with cellular data use.

Enjoy!

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Answer 6

rhenish

Level 1

9 points

Oct 5, 2015 7:43 PM in response to dborg01

Beware: you can unknowingly burn through your cellular data if not careful. With some apps you may want to use on both wifi and cellular, but use it differently on each mode to manage data usage. Specifically, I'm referring to apps for chatting, where you can choose whether or not to use video. If I am on cellular, I will only use voice. If I'm on wifi, I'll use video. However, with wifi assist, if you are using video because you are on wifi, but then your wifi drops off, you will then be using video on cellular and, therefore, unknowingly burning through your cellular data very rapidly. I unknowingly burned through my entire month's of data just chatting with my girlfriend.

There may be other kinds of apps where this may be an issue. I do wish Apple had either turned wifi assist off by default or otherwise let me know this happened. A warning indicating when you've switched to 3G would also be helpful. (As an aside, I know some apps distinguish between cellular and wifi; it would be great if, for example, Google hangouts had an option to disable video when on cellular...).

Cheers!

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