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iPhone Cellular Data Usage Doesn't Add Up???

R

radar2000

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 8, 2013
7
1
I have an iPhone 6s and for the past 2 months, I've received notices from my carrier stating that I'm about to go over my data plan limit. This is strange as I rarely go over my limit and nothing has changed from my daily usage habits.

My carriers billing starts on the 11th day of the month. This period I had decided to track my usage on my iPhone and had reset the statistic under the iPhones Cellular Data Usage page/function.

Again, I'm 6 days into my billing period and it's showing that I have used 626 MB already. This is also confirmed on my carriers app. Wait what?!!

I then decide to count all of the data from each app from my iPhones Cellular Data Usage page, and it equates to 70 MB. That's a 556 MB difference!!!???

Anyone else experiencing this with their iPhone 6s?

Any suggestions / recommendations would be appreciated.

Cheers!
 
What carrier do you have?

Verizon and my "current period" usage have been pretty spot on for me - maybe a 50mb difference here and there.

Verizon's usage page has a VERY detailed breakdown of what they think is using the data. I'd definitely look there.
 
Thanks everyone.

I'll take a deeper dive to see what's hogging the data.

Cheers!
 
For what it's worth, I have noticed the same thing for the first time this month. My cellular usage is reading at about 350 MB, while the sum of all the individual app usage (including system services) is about 112 MB. That's a big difference, and I haven't the foggiest idea what's causing it. I surely would like to.

I checked my usage on my Verizon account and it matches (approximately) the 350 MB number. So more than 2/3 of my data usage for this month is completely unaccounted for in the app-by-app usage listing.
 
I turn off all of the background processes regarding location.

For instance, under location -> system services, there are tiny pings that send data to apple about certain specifics, like location of WiFi networks, travel speed to update their maps etc.

I'm not sure how much data it uses but I'm not about to find out.

In addition to that I turn off all automatic updates, only doing them when WiFi is on, and I also turn off all background app refreshes aside for essential apps (Phone, Messages, E-mail).
 
Agreed, but all of those uses should be accounted for in the usage list. WiFi assist is a separate item (in my case it shows 68 KB of usage) and most of the other stuff is itemized under System Services (33.6 MB for me at the moment) etc.

Any usage should be listed there, but clearly there's something quite significant that is not. Strategies to reduce data usage are useful, but it's a lot easier to manage when you can figure out what's using all the data.
 
neilw said:
For what it's worth, I have noticed the same thing for the first time this month. My cellular usage is reading at about 350 MB, while the sum of all the individual app usage (including system services) is about 112 MB. That's a big difference, and I haven't the foggiest idea what's causing it. I surely would like to.

I checked my usage on my Verizon account and it matches (approximately) the 350 MB number. So more than 2/3 of my data usage for this month is completely unaccounted for in the app-by-app usage listing.
Click to expand...

Good info.
Maybe something Apple needs to address with a software fix.
The data is counted but not displayed correctly on what app/process it was used on.
Interesting.
 
Has anyone determined any resolution for an issue like this. It's now two years later and the problem doesn't seem to have magically solved itself. I have even tried calling Apple customer support and they do the same thing as the people on this thread...have you tried turning this off? have you tried turning that off?

I am not interested in iteratively turning data usage things on and off. The statistics of my app trackers are supposed to show me exactly how much data each app is using, and the cell data statistic also have a whole section on "System Services". I have smartly configured background app refresh and tried turning background refresh off, and even if I didn't turn it off, apps that are updating in background should be accounted for in the statistics tally.

The question is: what is the source of UNACCOUNTED for data that isn't being tallied in any of the apps and isn't being tallied in the System Services. If I knew that, I could better manage the data and know what to turn on and turn off.
 
willkeim said:
Has anyone determined any resolution for an issue like this. It's now two years later and the problem doesn't seem to have magically solved itself. I have even tried calling Apple customer support and they do the same thing as the people on this thread...have you tried turning this off? have you tried turning that off?

I am not interested in iteratively turning data usage things on and off. The statistics of my app trackers are supposed to show me exactly how much data each app is using, and the cell data statistic also have a whole section on "System Services". I have smartly configured background app refresh and tried turning background refresh off, and even if I didn't turn it off, apps that are updating in background should be accounted for in the statistics tally.

The question is: what is the source of UNACCOUNTED for data that isn't being tallied in any of the apps and isn't being tallied in the System Services. If I knew that, I could better manage the data and know what to turn on and turn off.
Click to expand...

I haven't noticed the problem recently. At the moment, my numbers seem to add up properly (although good lord the MLB At Bat app uses an obscene amount of data).

On the other hand, I also haven't come close to using up my data in any month recently, so I haven't been monitoring it as closely as before.

Running latest SW on my iPhone 7.
 
noobinator said:
Is WiFi assist on?

https://www.imore.com/how-to-turn-off-wifi-assist-ios-iphone
Click to expand...

The original question was about the data that is not being accounted for. Data used with "WiFi Assist" should get tallied up for each individual app, and WiFi Assist further has its own statistic broken out.

The question was, what is using data that isn't being accounted for anywhere, except in the overall total?
[doublepost=1559224023][/doublepost]
neilw said:
I haven't noticed the problem recently. At the moment, my numbers seem to add up properly (although good lord the MLB At Bat app uses an obscene amount of data).

On the other hand, I also haven't come close to using up my data in any month recently, so I haven't been monitoring it as closely as before.

Running latest SW on my iPhone 7.
Click to expand...

From your earlier post, it sounds like you have Verizon service. Does anyone know if the app-by-app data usage tracker is recording data locally on the iPhone through some "tap" into the network stack, or is the app-by-app data usage tracked by my cell provider (AT&T/Verizon) and then downloaded to my iPhone when I want to look up my cell usage? There is a conspicuous "loading" pause that I get on the Cell Settings screen every time I load it and want to look at usage statistics. If it was stored locally, wouldn't it load up immediately? Maybe different carriers have different fidelity of data tracking. Maybe Verizon figured it out, and AT&T isn't doing it very well? (I have AT&T).
 
willkeim said:
From your earlier post, it sounds like you have Verizon service. Does anyone know if the app-by-app data usage tracker is recording data locally on the iPhone through some "tap" into the network stack, or is the app-by-app data usage tracked by my cell provider (AT&T/Verizon) and then downloaded to my iPhone when I want to look up my cell usage? There is a conspicuous "loading" pause that I get on the Cell Settings screen every time I load it and want to look at usage statistics. If it was stored locally, wouldn't it load up immediately? Maybe different carriers have different fidelity of data tracking. Maybe Verizon figured it out, and AT&T isn't doing it very well? (I have AT&T).
Click to expand...
Without knowing the innards of the iPhone network stack, I would nonetheless believe that the data accounting *has* to be done in the phone. No way Apple would outsource that function.
 
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