HUGE data usage on iPhone4 while you sleep

[MotionMan]

Might it be your router that's dropping you?

That may be true, but this is happening while we (my wife, myself and the iPhone) are asleep.

131 mb of data while we sleep?

MotionMan

 

[postmortemIA]

does iphone drops wifi if it is in 'sleep mode' to optimize battery? i know that android does. so when you unlock the screen after it has been idle a while, can you see it connecting to wifi?

 

[MotionMan]

does iphone drops wifi if it is in 'sleep mode' to optimize battery? i know that android does. so when you unlock the screen after it has been idle a while, can you see it connecting to wifi?

I think it does drop wifi when it sleeps. However, we have had iPhones for 2 years and this iPhone for a month. This just started happening and it only happens on only one of the four iPhone 4's in our family.

It just makes no sense (as all the complaint threads at Apple.com and others about this have stated).

MotionMan

 

[DnetMHZ]

I've noticed similar activity, but never investigated further as I never come even close to my 2 gig limit.

12/25 12:54 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 11107KB
12/26 12:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1677KB
12/28 12:29 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 46826KB
12/31 12:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 28820KB
01/01 12:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9120KB

Always around the same time period.

I do have wifi at home but most of the time I keep it off on the phone because I'm a prick and want to use all the AT&T data I can since I pay for it.

 

[MotionMan]

I've noticed similar activity, but never investigated further as I never come even close to my 2 gig limit.

12/25 12:54 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 11107KB
12/26 12:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1677KB
12/28 12:29 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 46826KB
12/31 12:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 28820KB
01/01 12:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9120KB

Always around the same time period.

I do have wifi at home but most of the time I keep it off on the phone because I'm a prick and want to use all the AT&T data I can since I pay for it.

What city (or state) are you in?

MotionMan

 

[DnetMHZ]

What city (or state) are you in?

MotionMan

I'm in central NJ

 

[Mark R]

12/25 12:54 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 11107KB
12/26 12:49 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1677KB
12/28 12:29 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 46826KB
12/31 12:45 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 28820KB
01/01 12:06 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 9120KB

Always around the same time period.

My bills are like this, from another carrier - but this seems to be an artefact of the billing process (the time bears no relation to the time the data was used).

The 'time' recorded is not the time the data was used, but the time at which the billing database received your data traffic stats from the rest of the network - and it looks like the networks usually batch the data statistics up and send them over in the middle of night.

 

[Mark R]

does iphone drops wifi if it is in 'sleep mode' to optimize battery? i know that android does. so when you unlock the screen after it has been idle a while, can you see it connecting to wifi?

Yes. iPhone does this. The wifi is switched off when asleep, as maintaining an idle wifi connection is expensive power wise. By contrast, cellular networks are designed to idle with virtually zero power consumption. When you wake the phone up, there will be a short delay while the phone connects to its wifi network.

When iphone is asleep, it will preferentially use the cellular network for checking for new e-mails, push notifications, etc. The e-mail app strictly limits attachment download, so the automated process shouldn't consume significant bandwidth.

However, in certain circumstances, the wifi connection will remain active, even when the phone is asleep. Persistent wifi will be enabled when the phone is plugged in and charging, there is no cellular network, or cellular data is turned off. In these circumstances wifi will be used for push and data in preference to cellular.

One thing worth noting about the iphone is that it will ignore a wifi connection (even if connected to the network) unless it can ping www.apple.com (if the ping fails, you don't even get the wifi signal strength icon). So, if you're router's signal is flaky in one part of the house, you may find that phones in that area prefer to use cellular.

 

[Ns1]

back with the 3gs, there was a huge uproar over this

what ended up happening was the 3gs logged all data usage during the day and then sent out the data at night

so everyone thought it was double counting data when in reality it wasn't

This is a routine update of your daily data activity on your device to ensure the accuracy of your data billing. Customers are not charged for data usage, given that no data session is generated. It’s not uncommon for devices that are ‘always on’, like iPhone, to process data event records for billing purposes after a certain amount of inactivity or after long periods of time. It’s also separate from how our system lets you monitor your data consumption.

http://www.everythingicafe.com/att-explains-late-night-data-usage/2010/07/29/

 

[MotionMan]

back with the 3gs, there was a huge uproar over this

what ended up happening was the 3gs logged all data usage during the day and then sent out the data at night

so everyone thought it was double counting data when in reality it wasn't



http://www.everythingicafe.com/att-explains-late-night-data-usage/2010/07/29/

So, I wonder, why did this NEVER happen before on my wife's iPhone and has NEVER happened on the other three iPhones we have on this account.

I use data a buttload more in a day than my wife does in a week.

MotionMan

 

[Ns1]

So, I wonder, why did this NEVER happen before on my wife's iPhone and has NEVER happened on the other three iPhones we have on this account.

I use data a buttload more in a day than my wife does in a week.

MotionMan

don't shoot the messenger.

 

[MotionMan]

don't shoot the messenger.

Nope, I was just commenting on the information you provided.

(Made me think of the messenger scene in '300'. Into the hole you go!)

MotionMan

 

[Qbah]

Hmm... apparently something very similar is happening with Windows Phone 7:

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/mailbag/Mailbag-January-2-2011.aspx

Julie G. writes:

I got my Windows Phone 7 the day it came out, and as of yesterday I completed my first full month of service. With this phone I do not stream, I hardly surf the internet, I mostly have the location services turned off. I do have Facebook connected with Windows Live so I do get the updates on the people hub and pictures hub and I do play Bejeweled quite a lot as I am addicted. I do have my Yahoo mail and Outlook mail synced to the phone. Beyond those few things, I do not do much else with the phone.

On December 22nd I received an email from AT&T saying that I was close to my 2GB data limit which truly shocked me as I feel I do not use data that much. I went and looked at my AT&T account online and noticed that my phone was sending huge chunks of data seemingly in patterns. For instance on November 21-24 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 10:41pm each day and Dec 1-4 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 9:41am each day. On December 23rd I turned on airplane mode so my phone could no longer send data. I turned airplane mode off briefly on December 23rd and the phone sent 400 MB of data. I called AT&T yesterday, December 28th, but they said that there was nothing that they can do to figure out what was happening on my phone.

...

There's more, but you get the idea.

Yes, this is a curiously common problem, and I'm sort of shocked Microsoft hasn't addressed this publicly yet, either to confirm it or to offer a fix. Basically what's happening is that the phone is utilizing the 3G data connection even when Wi-Fi is available. It's not clear what app(s) or part(s) of the OS is causing this, but it's definitely widely-reported.

Coincidentally to this, I've been tracking my own data usage on the Windows Phone Secrets blog. I suspect my monthly data usage gains are tied to this same problem. I also think this might be tied to Marketplace somehow. But I just don't know for sure.

Microsoft? If this is your fault, as I suspect, you're costing people money on this one.

What is worse for WP7 users, even being on WiFi doesn't help - the phone still uses 3G to send the packages...

 

[MotionMan]

So AT&T credited our account for the data usage on my wife's phone. However, last week, it happened on my sister-in-law's iPhone4.

This is clearly an ongoing problem that I am sure Apple blames AT&T and visa versa. I wonder if it will happen on Verizon, too?

MotionMan

 

[Tegeril]

I've got some awesome entries as well.

333 FRI 12/31/2010 12:43AM Data Transfer Data 546 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
334 FRI 12/31/2010 2:37PM Data Transfer Data 13 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
335 FRI 12/31/2010 2:49PM Data Transfer Data 21 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
336 FRI 12/31/2010 3:06PM Data Transfer Data 110,340 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
337 SAT 01/01/2011 12:12AM Data Transfer Data 16 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
338 SAT 01/01/2011 3:12AM Data Transfer Data 229 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
339 SAT 01/01/2011 1:16PM Data Transfer Data 5 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00

Good thing I kept unlimited.

 

[Emulex]

no kidding with unlimited they can put 10gb a night i could case less.

p.s. make sure you disable mobilehunt on installous 4.

 

[MotionMan]

no kidding with unlimited they can put 10gb a night i could case less.

p.s. make sure you disable mobilehunt on installous 4.

Since I do not know what either of those things are, I would assume I am safe.

MotionMan

 

[gorcorps]

I hate to bump a year+ old thread, but my buddy came to me explaining this same problem with his mom's new iphone. She's had it about 4 weeks (on ATT) and they noticed two large "sent" data charges, both at about 100mb. This thread seems to be filled with people saying they don't care because they have so much data anyway, but now that unlimited plans are all but extinct this is a bigger issue. Was this ever diagnosed? Looking at the Apple discussion thread they seem to still be trying to figure it all out, which is an embarrassingly long time to have this problem.

I was hoping maybe the OP here would have stumbled onto something that fixed his issue.

 

[MotionMan]

I was hoping maybe the OP here would have stumbled onto something that fixed his issue.

I gave up and bumped my wife up to the next level plan.

I do not think that Apple or ATT purposely installed this issue, I just think that no one is motivated enough to fix it or explain it clearly.

If I was upset enough, I would bring a class-action lawsuit (I am a litigation attorney, so this is not an idle threat). That might fix it (but I doubt it).

MotionMan

 

[Qbah]

I started a new cycle Feb 1st. The afternoon of Feb 2nd I got an SMS saying I used up my quota for the month (measly 100MB, but still...). The only thing I did in those two days was delete ~5 spam emails in the mail app. Nothing else.

It it still happening to me

 

[FoxFifth]

MotionMan -- I used to follow the known problem thread you referenced in your post. It is currently 112 pages and I gave up following it when it was around 50 pages and I got bored of my mind reading similar posts with similar problem and proposed solutions that didn't work.

A couple of things that were repeatedly discussed was the fact that the times on the AT&T billings do not always represent the actual time of the usage. Apparently some types of usage are aggregated and billed daily (or at least later than the usage). There were dozens and dozens of posts about middle of the night billings when the phones were not in use.

Numerous people did all of the logical things like turning off push, removing suspect apps, verifying wifi connections, etc with no solution. Also, while I was following it the posts were predominantly AT&T but that was before the Verizon phone; there were reports of similar problems from other countries with non-AT&T carriers but the volume wasn't enough for me to conclude whether it was an Apple issue of an AT&T issue. I found it hard to understand that neither Apple nor AT&T had an explanation.

 

[alent1234]

if it's women, then chances are they are emailing photos to each other and that's using up all the bandwidth

otherwise its an app like pandora running in the background, lately i've been turning off 3g when i get home

 

[MotionMan]

if it's women, then chances are they are emailing photos to each other and that's using up all the bandwidth

otherwise its an app like pandora running in the background, lately i've been turning off 3g when i get home

As for my wife, no and no.

MotionMan

 

[MotionMan]

A couple of things that were repeatedly discussed was the fact that the times on the AT&T billings do not always represent the actual time of the usage. Apparently some types of usage are aggregated and billed daily (or at least later than the usage). There were dozens and dozens of posts about middle of the night billings when the phones were not in use.

I understand that, but it still does not explain the large amount allegedly being used by my wife. I just do not buy it.

MotionMan

 

[sportage]

I was SHOCKED to find my average data used a month is over 16GB. I use the XM radio app and netflix. Thank goodness I have ATT unlimited. I think this data charge thing is just another scam. I remember the original iPad had ATT unlimited for just 25 a month. Data usage is WAY too over played by cell phone companies. All data should be unlimited and not costing more than $35 on a phone and not over $50 on a tablet/iPad for umlimited. And they know that too!