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Battery issues = open iCloud pings in background

So what would be the consequence of deleting the account to test this theory? Would I lose my contacts and calendar entries, or would they stay the same on the phone but stop syncing with my home computer?

Hopefully if this is an actual issue it can be rectified, as MobileMe didn't seem to suffer the same issue.
 
I tried it, and you basically just go back to the way iOS4 operated. You'd only lose what was iCloud only. But it also asks before deleting if you'd like to keep the data that exists currently on your phone.
Then, just go home, and sync to iTunes as usual.
 
I deleted my iCloud account two days ago due to dramatically increased data usage and poor battery life on my iPhone 4.

Went back to gmail for push contacts/calendar and both battery life and data usage is back to normal.

How was this theory debunked? It seems to have fixed it for me.
 
MBHockey said:
I deleted my iCloud account two days ago due to dramatically increased data usage and poor battery life on my iPhone 4.

Went back to gmail for push contacts/calendar and both battery life and data usage is back to normal.

How was this theory debunked? It seems to have fixed it for me.
Click to expand...

The act of going in and out of General > Usage causes data transfer to occur as iCloud calculates your iCloud storage capacity.
 
Actually I posted that same hackernews thread to the batterygate thread with the same thought that this constant 3g connection was causing battery drain.

If you read that hackernews thread, the poster mentions he saw a continuous data draw at 1 k/s for 2 hours. It's unlikely he went to the usage page back and forth for 2 hours, so the assumption that his browsing the usage page caused the constant data draw for 2 hours seems unlikely. I still think there's an iCloud bug/issue somewhere that is causing phones be constantly pushing data (or also incorrectly using 3g instead of wifi). I have experienced the same massive increase in 3g data using (usually 200 mb a month, already at 700 mb this period) with no real difference in 3g daily usage.
 
aaac2 said:
Actually I posted that same hackernews thread to the batterygate thread with the same thought that this constant 3g connection was causing battery drain.

If you read that hackernews thread, the poster mentions he saw a continuous data draw at 1 k/s for 2 hours. It's unlikely he went to the usage page back and forth for 2 hours, so the assumption that his browsing the usage page caused the constant data draw for 2 hours seems unlikely. I still think there's an iCloud bug/issue somewhere that is causing phones be constantly pushing data (or also incorrectly using 3g instead of wifi). I have experienced the same massive increase in 3g data using (usually 200 mb a month, already at 700 mb this period) with no real difference in 3g daily usage.
Click to expand...

Its unlikely? No that's exactly what he did. Everytime he went to check the send/receive (probably once an hour), he noticed an increase of 1kb -- the same amount of bytes it takes to check the servers for your capacity amount to icloud. That's exactly whats he going to see if he does that on that screen -- and on any other screen that has to ask the server for the storage capacity amount to icloud. (which is like 2-3 other ones)

So he took that "increase" and tried to put some metrics behind it, which obviously would be incorrect given the initial cause was incorrect.
 
PerplexShyt said:
Its unlikely? No that's exactly what he did. Everytime he went to check the send/receive (probably once an hour), he noticed an increase of 1kb -- the same amount of bytes it takes to check the servers for your capacity amount to icloud. That's exactly whats he going to see if he does that on that screen -- and on any other screen that has to ask the server for the storage capacity amount to icloud. (which is like 2-3 other ones)

So he took that "increase" and tried to put some metrics behind it, which obviously would be incorrect given the initial cause was incorrect.
Click to expand...

But if I understand you correctly -- what you're saying is true he would have seen an increase of 1 kb per hour, right? Just 1 kb every time he went to settings and checked his usage.

But this is what he said (emphasis mine):

Total data usage after 2 hours resulted in a steady, predictable 1 kilobyte per second average usage.
Click to expand...

Also, the comment from the author specifically mentions that the phone was sitting idle:

We've jailbroken the device and performed a tcpdump capture of the 3G packets (while the device is sitting idle).

The traffic appears to be a semi-constant HTTPS connection to an Apple run server:
Primary name: p02-quota.icloud.com.akadns.net
Click to expand...
 
PerplexShyt said:
Its unlikely? No that's exactly what he did. Everytime he went to check the send/receive (probably once an hour), he noticed an increase of 1kb -- the same amount of bytes it takes to check the servers for your capacity amount to icloud. That's exactly whats he going to see if he does that on that screen -- and on any other screen that has to ask the server for the storage capacity amount to icloud. (which is like 2-3 other ones)

So he took that "increase" and tried to put some metrics behind it, which obviously would be incorrect given the initial cause was incorrect.
Click to expand...

Here's the thread you posted about this exact issue, which was completely debunked.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1258450/
 
The thread you posted does talk about usage increase, but as MBHockey points out, the scale of the increase is different. Once the server check to get the quota is done, the connection should be dropped as the information is received. But the underlying issue in the hackernews thread is that the connection is constantly getting data at 1 k/s, versus singular checks against usage which should be really small and only occur when looked up.

Outside of a bug causing the data connection to be constant, another reason it may have been occuring in the hackernews thread is that the icloud servers were overloaded at the time, so the phones kept pinging and pinging trying to get quota information, thus driving up cellular usage (that thread doesn't mention if wifi was available). It would be interesting if someone could test out if this excessive data usage is still occuring as the icloud servers should be more stable now.
 
Jimbo47 said:
Here's the thread you posted about this exact issue, which was completely debunked.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1258450/
Click to expand...

yes. fortunately i was the one who debunked it

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aaac2 said:
The thread you posted does talk about usage increase, but as MBHockey points out, the scale of the increase is different. Once the server check to get the quota is done, the connection should be dropped as the information is received. But the underlying issue in the hackernews thread is that the connection is constantly getting data at 1 k/s, versus singular checks against usage which should be really small and only occur when looked up.

Outside of a bug causing the data connection to be constant, another reason it may have been occuring in the hackernews thread is that the icloud servers were overloaded at the time, so the phones kept pinging and pinging trying to get quota information, thus driving up cellular usage (that thread doesn't mention if wifi was available). It would be interesting if someone could test out if this excessive data usage is still occuring as the icloud servers should be more stable now.
Click to expand...

I see what you are saying, but you are making an assumption on his behalf. There is no constant data sending or receiving. with icloud, it just seems like that when its on because there is no way around those "ping" fields for storage on the USAGE page. If he goes back "in the lab" with his iphones he will find this out by truly measuring how much data sends receives stacked against how many times he goes in and out of that page.

looking back at what that guy said, he says he has icloud enabled, but turned everything OFF in the options. If you turn something on and start transferring data, you will see there will be much more than 1kb an hour being transferred. So what does that mean....he is indicating a "leak" I found that highly incorrect given the "debunk" of speak of, and the small opportunity for anything to "leak" at all.

I encourage you , and that guy to test this out.

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MBHockey said:
But if I understand you correctly -- what you're saying is true he would have seen an increase of 1 kb per hour, right? Just 1 kb every time he went to settings and checked his usage.

QUOTE]

No im sorry, i just thought he said he checked it once per hour.

Its 1kb EVERYTIME you check it, so he may have well checked it once a minute, or once an hour. who knows.
Click to expand...
 
aaac2 said:
The thread you posted does talk about usage increase, but as MBHockey points out, the scale of the increase is different. Once the server check to get the quota is done, the connection should be dropped as the information is received. But the underlying issue in the hackernews thread is that the connection is constantly getting data at 1 k/s, versus singular checks against usage which should be really small and only occur when looked up.

Outside of a bug causing the data connection to be constant, another reason it may have been occuring in the hackernews thread is that the icloud servers were overloaded at the time, so the phones kept pinging and pinging trying to get quota information, thus driving up cellular usage (that thread doesn't mention if wifi was available). It would be interesting if someone could test out if this excessive data usage is still occuring as the icloud servers should be more stable now.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I was running iOS 5 GM for 7 days before official release. I did not have iCloud yet because 10.7.2 was not out nor did I make an iCloud account from the GM. I had great battery life. Then once 10.7.2 and iCloud all hit i set up an iCloud account and that's when my battery troubles and high data usage started.

In the week I had iCloud on I had racked up nearly 1 GB of cellular data usage. This represented an almost eight-fold increase for me. Since 2007 I have never used more than 500 MB in a month, but with iCloud enabled I used nearly 1 GB in a week.

Since deleting my iCloud account two days ago I have seen much better battery life (right now i'm at 1 hour usage with 7 hours standby at 90%) on my iPhone 4 and AT&T.com shows not much of an increase in cell data usage over the last two days.
 
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FWIW, I had a sucky 4S battery. Deleted iCloud all together. Made no difference. I restored, then deleted iCloud. Made no difference. I had something rogue in the background constantly doing something related to network services, but for me, it wasn't iCloud.

In the end, a new 4S and the battery is doing pretty darn well.
 
7timethecrystal said:
In the end, a new 4S and the battery is doing pretty darn well.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, but stats from this morning before my phone finally shut down from low battery below.

Wifi & Bluetooth on, one Exchange account syncing email & calendar, one Gmail account syncing email, iCloud account syncing email, contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks, notes, photostream, documents&data, and find-my-iphone all on, nothing turned off in Location services. LCD brightness sits at 50%.

Usage was relatively light, 30 minutes of calls, a some web browsing, email, etc. I'm in a strong signal area, typically four bars on AT&T.

You shouldn't have to turn off the stuff that defines the whole point of having the phone.

.
 

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thesiren said:
he clearly states in the article that the phone was IDLE.
Click to expand...

doesn't matter because he had to CHECK the usage, and checking the usage sends/receives data due to the icloud storage fields

and to the poster above. Yes deleting icloud doesn't mean a dang thing because my wife's regular iphone 4 has icloud ENABLED, and I had icloud deleted, and her phone was getting great battery life
 
Actually PerplexShyt, it does matter that the phone was idle. He didn't have to go into usage screen to check on cellular usage because he jailbroke his phone and took a data dump of what happened during that idle time. And within that idle time, the poster noticed a constant 1 k/s stream. He bypassed the usage screen through jailbreak.

But again your point about the usage screen is not what we're getting at here. Browsing the usage screen and retrieving quota should be a small operation size wise. If you look at the "debunk" thread you guys reference, checking usage amounts to a 1-2 kb increase (per Jimbo47's findings). In order to achieve a 1 k/s increase for 2 hours, the user would have to click back and forth through the usage pages about once every second to 2 seconds for 2 hours. Why would the hackernews poster be testing it that way?

Again, yes when you browse the usage screens your cellular data will increase - we are not debating this. It is the scale at which the increase happens from whatever bug/situation is happening that implies that this has nothing to do with usage checking.

I would also like to point out what while battery draining is definitely an inconvenience, this excessive cellular data bug/issue actually does much more damage as it drives up 3g use. For those within a data quota, they could be billed a huge amount.
 
aaac2 said:
Actually PerplexShyt, it does matter that the phone was idle. He didn't have to go into usage screen to check on cellular usage because he jailbroke his phone and took a data dump of what happened during that idle time. And within that idle time, the poster noticed a constant 1 k/s stream. He bypassed the usage screen through jailbreak.

But again your point about the usage screen is not what we're getting at here. Browsing the usage screen and retrieving quota should be a small operation size wise. If you look at the "debunk" thread you guys reference, checking usage amounts to a 1-2 kb increase (per Jimbo47's findings). In order to achieve a 1 k/s increase for 2 hours, the user would have to click back and forth through the usage pages about once every second to 2 seconds for 2 hours. Why would the hackernews poster be testing it that way?

Again, yes when you browse the usage screens your cellular data will increase - we are not debating this. It is the scale at which the increase happens from whatever bug/situation is happening that implies that this has nothing to do with usage checking.

I would also like to point out what while battery draining is definitely an inconvenience, this excessive cellular data bug/issue actually does much more damage as it drives up 3g use. For those within a data quota, they could be billed a huge amount.
Click to expand...

okay. i think he has a defective phone then. i just dont believe there is an infrastructure that exists within the iphone that could allow some sort of data "leak".
 
PerplexShyt said:
doesn't matter because he had to CHECK the usage, and checking the usage sends/receives data due to the icloud storage fields
Click to expand...

dude, did you even read the article? he wasn't CHECKING. his phone is jail broken and he used a program to monitor the data usage for him.
 
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