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Massive Data Send on iPhone 3G

R

RogersDA

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 19, 2009
271
0
My wife's iPhone is rarely used for data except for the occasional map look-up, Yelp, etc.

Today, at 2:18pm, her phone sent 265+ MB out while we were driving for 35 minutes.


What the hell? That ate her entire 200MB monthly allowance in one send.
 
appleguy123 said:
How does she have an iPhone 3g and a limited data plan?
Click to expand...

Downgraded from unlimited to 200MB a few weeks ago online at AT&T. Did it for both 3G phones. AT&T allows people to do this that had the unlimited plans. Costs us $15 per phone per month vice $30 per phone per month. We are not big data users, so it helps us.
 
Were you using the GPS? Does she have push e-mail?

If the former, it was likely loading maps on the fly, if the latter, disable it in the future.

TEG
 
RogersDA said:
Downgraded from unlimited to 200MB a few weeks ago online at AT&T. Did it for both 3G phones. AT&T allows people to do this that had the unlimited plans. Costs us $15 per phone per month vice $30 per phone per month. We are not big data users, so it helps us.
Click to expand...

Did she have any data intensive apps immediately before she locked her phone? Pandora, Safari (more particularly a tab that wan't all the way loaded or auto refreshes), or Maps with GPS lock?
 
TEG said:
Were you using the GPS? Does she have push e-mail?

If the former, it was likely loading maps on the fly, if the latter, disable it in the future.

TEG
Click to expand...
The iPhone map app was running w/ GPS for about 20 minutes.
 
How did you get this information? If you got it from your bill the time stamps mean nothing. It simply is the time of day the ATT system adds up all the phone usage for since the last calculation, which is usually 24 hours. So if it is off the bill or ATT website you are likely looking at a full days usage, not 35 minutes.
 
wvphysics said:
How did you get this information? If you got it from your bill the time stamps mean nothing. It simply is the time of day the ATT system adds up all the phone usage for since the last calculation, which is usually 24 hours. So if it is off the bill or ATT website you are likely looking at a full days usage, not 35 minutes.
Click to expand...


I received the information @ ATT's website (which we looked at in response to a text from ATT at 10:00pm that my wife went over her usage amount).

Sure enough, of the 5 to 6 listings for data usage on 09/11 there is a listing at 2:18pm for 268593KB. Her normal 2:00am data send to ATT is about 80kb to 300kb.

So, this 268Mb of data is the direct result of the 20 minutes of map/GPS usage. Incredible.

We'll see what her 2:00am data send to AT&T is later on...
 
RogersDA said:
I received the information @ ATT's website (which we looked at in response to a text from ATT at 10:00pm that my wife went over her usage amount).

Sure enough, of the 5 to 6 listings for data usage on 09/11 there is a listing at 2:18pm for 268593KB. Her normal 2:00am data send to ATT is about 80kb to 300kb.

So, this 268Mb of data is the direct result of the 20 minutes of map/GPS usage. Incredible.

We'll see what her 2:00am data send to AT&T is later on...
Click to expand...

If you have two timestamps 20 minutes apart at the second is 268MB, then yes it may have occurred in that 20 minutes otherwise it is the total usage since the last tally, which is not always at 2am. It can be multiple times a day and does not reflect when the actual data transfer occurs.
 
I have a similar issue - my wife got a text today saying that she is almost over the limit for the 200mb plan, only 3 days into the month! She's previously never used more than 80mb in any month in the last 3 years. What's more, she reset the phone usage statistics on the first day of the billing cycle, and they're showing 3mb up and 8mb down. The key lines on the bill are below. The phones are iPhone 4s, not jailbroken.

Similarly, my account (never over 150mb in any month) has also gone to 95mb, but my phone reports 36mb up and 7mb down.

What's going on here? Does GPS usage not show up on the iPhone's usage statistics? Even if that's the case somehow, I'm at a loss to see how that could explain the bizarre amounts on my wife's account - she really has barely used the phone in the last few days.

09/15 08:49 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 91847KB
09/15 08:44 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 54KB
09/15 08:28 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 2271KB
09/15 05:52 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1548KB
09/15 04:23 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1198KB
09/15 11:44 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 650KB
09/15 10:41 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 1510KB
09/15 01:01 AM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 7854KB
09/14 07:17 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 38849KB
09/14 02:30 PM phone Internet/MEdia Net Sent 30136KB
 
This just happened to my brother's iPhone 4 this past weekend. He took a 1 hour drive while having the Maps app active and AT&T reports he used 260MBs. I find the size of the data transfer a bit dubious, 245MBs in both cases. I gave AT&T a call and they put me on the 2.5GB $25 plan, but would not/could not reveal anything on the data irregularity.
 
Did they increase the 2 GB plan to 2.5GB?
Maps do require a lot of data, because of the constant updating. It's weird that AT&T won't specify the data hog though.
antesef said:
I gave AT&T a call and they put me on the 2.5GB $25 plan, but would not/could not reveal anything on the data irregularity.
Click to expand...
 
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