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Large unexplained data use (Verizon)?

T

thompson11

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 12, 2009
59
0
Is anyone else seeing unusual data use on their Verizon iPad 2?

I started my plan on Tuesday, and it's been off my home wifi exactly once—during a trip out this afternoon. Somehow it claims I've used 128mb in that time.

Is there a way to see a breakdown of when data use was accruing, like AT&T has for iPhone users?

Edit: I think the culprit here is the WSJ iPad app. Doing some testing with the cellular data meter in the Settings app, I was able to see WSJ pulling down something like 10-15mb in just a few minutes. It must be downloading all the multimedia content for the newspaper in addition to the text, instead of pulling the multimedia on demand. This seems like a pretty serious flaw to me.
 
Last edited:
Things I did:

Browse the web
Use the WSJ iPad app
Play some Fruit Ninja

No video... no streaming... etc.

I guess, conceivably, I could have racked up 100mb in web use but that just seems so high given that I was mostly browsing forums and news sites (SFGate.com).

Verizon confirmed that all the data use occurred while I was out and about using the iPad. Maybe I'm a heavier user than I thought...
 
Any other apps that do background downloading or data updates maybe? Unless you manually close the app, something you were running previously might still be squawking in the running apps area.
 
I've done all that (except Ninja) for almost two weeks and have less than 200 on Verizon. Check other apps and turn off push unless needed.

Also there is two ways to check usage: under General and under Cellular Data. I find General to report much higher amounts than what Verizon reports. Presumably Verizon is what you get billed on.
 
well i turned my verizon data on wednesday mid day. i haven't done anything special but i am on wifi most of the time. I know i haven't streamed any audio or video. well i just checked and i have used 2mb since Wednesday.
 
I did some testing using the cellular data meter (zeroing it out in between tests).

SFGate.com: heavy graphics-based ads were resulting in 500kb-1mb page loads, but not terrible.

WSJ iPad App: I just let it run for a bit now, flipped to a few articles, etc. In the span of about 4 minutes it racked up 15mb of data. Yikes! That's the culprit.
 
thompson11 said:
WSJ iPad App: I just let it run for a bit now, flipped to a few articles, etc. In the span of about 4 minutes it racked up 15mb of data. Yikes! That's the culprit.
Click to expand...

Good find. I've been using it but only on wifi. Now that you mention it, the download meter shows for a long time. Seems like it downloads the whole issue (even though most articles aren't readable unless you pay).
 
freelance2 said:
Good find. I've been using it but only on wifi. Now that you mention it, the download meter shows for a long time. Seems like it downloads the whole issue (even though most articles aren't readable unless you pay).
Click to expand...

I'm a subscriber, so at least I can access it all. I think another factor here may have been that I restored my iPad this morning before heading to the Genius Bar for an appointment. I think the WSJ app actually downloads all of the past 7 days worth of issues, which was probably still going on while I was on 3G.

Cautionary tale, I'll probably let it sync up on the house wifi for awhile before I leave in the morning.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

There were several threads like this when the first 3G AT&T version came out. Turns out that users were clicking through on the diagnostics warning when the first synch occurred. You'd have to Reset Warning, select decline and synch again....
 
Juramentado said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

There were several threads like this when the first 3G AT&T version came out. Turns out that users were clicking through on the diagnostics warning when the first synch occurred. You'd have to Reset Warning, select decline and synch again....
Click to expand...

I don't see any place where I can reset warnings in the WSJ app. In fact, I don't see any settings anywhere, either in-app or in the global Settings.
 
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