Huge spike in data usage on IPhone 5 Verizon

[TCozens]

Unexplained huge jump in data usage with I-Phone 5

Tom Cozens Calculating status...
Tom Cozens Sep 3, 2013 1:36 PM



Is anyone else having this problem? My data usage for the I Phone 5 I bought in January was about 0.4 GB/ month. Since the middle of last week I have used over 9 GB. I'm not a gamer, I'm not sending tons of video or photos, I'm not surfing the net, I'm your average baby boomer business person. It is as if my phone was high jacked. So far Verizon has been no help. In the span of a week I've had to bump up our shared account from 4 GB to 6 then 10 and now to 12. I have all the latest software so this seems unrelated to the earlier problems report in various blogs about the first I-phone 5's. I've now turned off cellular data to hopefully prevent the next tsunami of data usage. To me this sounds like either a hardware or software issue not actually usage.

 

[rlacrossjr]

I would first go setting and look at the cellular usage log. If you are on a share plan this will pin point which device.


Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk

 

[WildCatStud333]

I had a spike last month but I came from the S4 to the iPhone 5. When I got my 5 last Monday I had used 1.2 gb in 4 days. So I went to the apple store and the checked out my phone. They said everything was working fine. I then called VZW and they looked into my line and said all my high data usage was when I had the S4. Hopefully everything gets back to normal this month. U should call VZW but first I would go to apple store and have them check ur phone out so when VZW says its ur phone u can tell them u have already got it checked out and has to be VZW.


Tapped out on my iPhone 5

 

[Fausty82]

Unexplained huge jump in data usage with I-Phone 5

Tom Cozens Calculating status...
Tom Cozens Sep 3, 2013 1:36 PM



Is anyone else having this problem? My data usage for the I Phone 5 I bought in January was about 0.4 GB/ month. Since the middle of last week I have used over 9 GB. I'm not a gamer, I'm not sending tons of video or photos, I'm not surfing the net, I'm your average baby boomer business person. It is as if my phone was high jacked. So far Verizon has been no help. In the span of a week I've had to bump up our shared account from 4 GB to 6 then 10 and now to 12. I have all the latest software so this seems unrelated to the earlier problems report in various blogs about the first I-phone 5's. I've now turned off cellular data to hopefully prevent the next tsunami of data usage. To me this sounds like either a hardware or software issue not actually usage.

My granddaughter was having a similar issue with her iPhone on VZW... her mom took it to the Apple store and they swapped it out on the spot. Seems that they've seen that a lot lately...

 

[TCozens]

It is my phone. I've got an appointment with apple tomorrow.

 

[Eileen89]

Unexplained huge jump in data usage with I-Phone 5

This same issue was mentioned in this thread as well. (see post #16): http://forums.imore.com/iphone-5/261182-going-apple-store.html#post2071853

 

[anon(4698833)]

This data usage spike is not exclusive to Verizon...this is a problem that all carriers have (and pretty much all phones using LTE). We've covered it a dozen times, but the carriers (from my point of view) simply do not understand how they should be assigning data usage (in relation to what the phone is actually using). The REAL problem is that they refuse to actively try to "fix" the problem, because the problem makes money for them.

 

[Fausty82]

This data usage spike is not exclusive to Verizon...this is a problem that all carriers have (and pretty much all phones using LTE). We've covered it a dozen times, but the carriers (from my point of view) simply do not understand how they should be assigning data usage (in relation to what the phone is actually using). The REAL problem is that they refuse to actively try to "fix" the problem, because the problem makes money for them.

While there are some iPhone 5 devices that exhibit the OP's situation more than others, I cannot disagree with your take on this, Sean. There is a certain "it can’t really be a problem because it’s making us lots of money" attitude of some providers/companies.

 

[anon(4698833)]

Certainly there are probably a handful of iPhones out there that exhibit some kind of weird issue that causes data leeching, but the other 99.9999% of the time, it's a problem with the way data is charged to the consumer...between me and my wife we have 4 iPhone's (I have a work and a personal and so does she)...when we went on vacation we left both work iPhones at home (powered down and data off redundantly just in case). When we came back, her iPhone had zero data usage registered for the time we were gone...but mine had about 300MB used...a few kb's here or there I would understand, maybe it was in a process while i shut it down or something and it completed before i finished (after documenting my data usage before shutting it down)...but 300MB? That's substantial.

When I called Verizon (the carrier for my work phone), they reflected to me that they had no idea what the problem was, and that my phone must have connected to the data network during our leave...when I explained that it was sitting on my bed powered down the entire time we were gone, the representative simply reverted to "We can credit your account for the usage..."

This crediting of accounts is a bandaid on a severely open wound...and as long as people keep accepting the credits as a "fix", they'll keep doing it without real solution.

 

[Fausty82]

Certainly there are probably a handful of iPhones out there that exhibit some kind of weird issue that causes data leeching, but the other 99.9999% of the time, it's a problem with the way data is charged to the consumer...between me and my wife we have 4 iPhone's (I have a work and a personal and so does she)...when we went on vacation we left both work iPhones at home (powered down and data off redundantly just in case). When we came back, her iPhone had zero data usage registered for the time we were gone...but mine had about 300MB used...a few kb's here or there I would understand, maybe it was in a process while i shut it down or something and it completed before i finished (after documenting my data usage before shutting it down)...but 300MB? That's substantial.

When I called Verizon (the carrier for my work phone), they reflected to me that they had no idea what the problem was, and that my phone must have connected to the data network during our leave...when I explained that it was sitting on my bed powered down the entire time we were gone, the representative simply reverted to "We can credit your account for the usage..."

This crediting of accounts is a bandaid on a severely open wound...and as long as people keep accepting the credits as a "fix", they'll keep doing it without real solution.

And the "credit solution" is only applied when a customer complains. It the customer doesn’t recognize excess data usage, or doesn’t contact their provider for a credit, it is simply more cash in the provider's pockets... your point is valid, and I recognize it as such.

 

[rjkgr]

i jumped from 2.1 gb to 17 gb last month haha

 

[Jaguarr40]

Certainly there are probably a handful of iPhones out there that exhibit some kind of weird issue that causes data leeching, but the other 99.9999% of the time, it's a problem with the way data is charged to the consumer...between me and my wife we have 4 iPhone's (I have a work and a personal and so does she)...when we went on vacation we left both work iPhones at home (powered down and data off redundantly just in case). When we came back, her iPhone had zero data usage registered for the time we were gone...but mine had about 300MB used...a few kb's here or there I would understand, maybe it was in a process while i shut it down or something and it completed before i finished (after documenting my data usage before shutting it down)...but 300MB? That's substantial.

When I called Verizon (the carrier for my work phone), they reflected to me that they had no idea what the problem was, and that my phone must have connected to the data network during our leave...when I explained that it was sitting on my bed powered down the entire time we were gone, the representative simply reverted to "We can credit your account for the usage..."

This crediting of accounts is a bandaid on a severely open wound...and as long as people keep accepting the credits as a "fix", they'll keep doing it without real solution.

Nuf said.

 

[Texan2015]

We are having the same poblems with our iPhone5's. We were using 3 gig for all phones, and this month my wife's phone was using 5 gig. After looking at the data usage, I saw that there was data usage at mid-night, 3 am, 6 am, 9am. noon, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm for each day. I called AT&T and they recommended we turn off any settings we don't need. They said Apple would do updates and downloads automatically unless we stopped it. They recommended changing the following settings,
1. Setting, Privacy, Diag and Usage, Don't send - turn off. This was the only setting that was different from my phone that was not having this problem.
2. Settings, iTunes & Apps Store, turn off Automatic downloads fr Music, apps, Books, Updates
3. Aettings, Cellular, Turn off Data Roaming, turn off Personal Hotspot if you are not using it, turn off apps you don't use regularly
4. Douple click on the iphone round button, then slide up any apps that are open. This is the only way to ensure an app is closed.
Please let me know of other settings we should also be checking that could be caused the data usage spikes/

 

[Ledsteplin]

This: go to Settings >Privacy >Location Services >scroll down to "system services"> toggle all those off except Find My iPhone. Also toggle off Frequent locations, popular near me, routing and traffic, and you already mentioned diagnostics and usage. The main thing is to stay on wifi as much as possible. If you're out and about, don't do much on cellular data. Videos and FaceTime use a lot of data. Facebook will use a lot because of all the auto play videos. Go to Settings >Cellular Toggle off anything you don't want to use off wifi. Like the App Store. That can wait. Scroll down to reset statistics and set that at the beginning of each billing cycle. Use that to see how much data your phone is using.

Check in your MyVerizon online (not in the app) and see which phone is using data and about when. You should understand that if it says the data was used at 2:00 pm, it could have been anytime in a 6 hour window. I had a spike of about 400 mb one day. It said 2:34 pm. After talking to Verizon, I found it was done when I went outside off wifi and checked my LTE data speeds on Speedtest.net. That takes a lot of data. But I did it at 5:00 pm.


Sent from my ancient but trustworthy iPhone 5. ☮