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livebackwards

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2012
44
0
Hey so today my iphone 5 has started to drain my battery at a crazy pace.
After I removed my phone from its nightly charge after 3 hours of being idle in my pocket I got a 20% remaining battery life warning.

I checked my phone and it had been downloading from cellular ( I am at work) and my usage was at 11 GB of data. Not sure how much was used this morning so I went and did the following
1.) turned off cellular for all my apps and the problem was not resolved.
2.) turned off all location services and still the same problem
3.) I updated 2 apps this morning. ibooks and itunes university. So I deleted both of those and still the download and battery drain persisted
4.) Turned off icloud sync and icloud backup, no help

I then noticed my "systems Services" usage was almost the same as my cellular usage. Both located under Setting---Cellular

Looking further into "System services" and it was my "Media services" that was pulling all the data.

I reset all my statistics and yup both my "celluar data" and my "Media Services" usage was the same. I watched as every few seconds my phone downloaded 5-10 megs it got to 458 megs before I turned off all Cellular to my phone and that did the trick.

What is media Services doing? and how do I stop it?

Currently I have Cellular data turned off and its not longer downloading and my battery drain is back to normal, but my fancy phone is now just a phone :rolleyes:

Thankfully I am on ATT and grandfathered into unlimited data (even though this will throttle my speed for the remainder of the month now)

anyone seen this before?
 
Last edited:

PNutts

macrumors 601
Jul 24, 2008
4,874
357
Pacific Northwest, US
If you look at Settings - General - Usage it will tell you what is using your storage (and About will tell you how many of various items are on it). Downloading that much data should show up somewhere. :)
 

livebackwards

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2012
44
0
That the strange thing nothing was using my storage. It was just in the "System services" and it was my "Media services" under cellular where anything showed up. I decided to go nuclear and reset my iphone, reload ios7 and set my phone up new. So far so good
 

zorinlynx

macrumors G3
May 31, 2007
8,144
17,477
Florida, USA
Are you per-chance using iTunes Match, and it tried to synchronize your library onto the phone via cellular?

That's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that could consume so much data under Media services, which is built into the phone.
 

livebackwards

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 22, 2012
44
0
Are you per-chance using iTunes Match, and it tried to synchronize your library onto the phone via cellular?

That's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that could consume so much data under Media services, which is built into the phone.

No I do not use itunes match. Its very odd I can't find out anywhere what could have caused it. Thankfully my nuclear option has worked so far.
 

TBONE72

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2007
188
11
This is very interesting. I hope you find the cause of the issue and keep us updated.........
 

euchanels

macrumors newbie
Aug 28, 2012
14
0
i have the SAME problem

its maddening! I posted about exactly the same problem, tried resetting my network settings ive tried everything! nothing! I cant afford this!
 

Coupz

macrumors regular
Dec 24, 2013
200
20
Settings - Cellular Data - under all apps there is System Services and inside you can see exactly what downloaded how much.
 

Ali.m

macrumors newbie
Jul 20, 2014
2
0
Did anyone find a solution to this? M having the same issue except it's the mapping services that keeps eating away all my data ... 1gb per day !!
I've turned off almost everything inside location services. Deleted most of my apps that is recently downloaded.... This problem just started last week.
 
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ibbumpin

macrumors newbie
Jul 11, 2013
12
7
6+ iOS 8

I've had similar issues since upgrading to the 6+ this week. I've turned off cell data usage but I'm still getting txt from AT&T about cell usage. iTunes match appears to be trying and failing to download my music library. I've turned off the music app for cell data usage to no avail. Under system services there's a Media Services that is now over 8gb usage. This service seems to ignore any cell data usage settings and just tries where it can. I've tried going through all the songs it's trying to download and just hit the stop button on them (over 3000 songs) and there seems to be a job or task that starts them all back up again. Anyone else fighting this?
 

DeepStuff

macrumors regular
Sep 18, 2014
164
168
Exactly the same as you, IOS 8 iPhone 6 plus, media services usage at 6 gigs, music match is turned off, music app off, this could get really expensive really quickly.
 
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