Help please. Daughters New Iphone6 4G. Data use gone through the roof.

As above. I’m a Luddite when it comes to stuff like this, plus an Andriod user. She got a new Iphone 6 with 4G and 2 gig of monthly data. Previously she was on 1 gig 3G and NEVER went over her allowance.

Halfway through her first billing cycle and she gets a txt saying she has already used 2Gig!!

She is not watching movies or video, no other usage over and above what she used to have. I put Data Manager on it which showed 200meg of use in one day, but unfortunately it wont tell you what is actually using the data.

So could you more learned people advise on either what it may be or an app that can show data usage before her bills spiral out of control ??

Thanks all.

you dont need a separate app, settings > cellular and scroll to the bottom will tell you how much each app has used.

my guess is spotify or similar.

Does she still have mobile data turned on in the house when she could/should be using wifi (if you have it).

I’ve found the biggest Data Killer is Instagram… Does she use that?

Do what I did on my son’s – turn off mobile data. Only use data when connected to wi-fi.
(er, like what darren mentioned already, of course)

Do what I did on my son’s – turn off mobile data. Only use data when connected to wi-fi.

Doesn’t seem unreasonable as a punishment for watching Netflix 24/7 and exceeding your allowance, but a bit harsh when she’s done nothing wrong, ostensibly.

IMO having data only on when on wifi is a massive PITA and defeats the purpose of having a smart phone! Obviously though you may as well use wifi through choice at home.

Does she still have mobile data turned on in the house when she could/should be using wifi (if you have it).

The phone should automatically switch to using the wifi for data. (mine does)

It should, unless the new phone doesn’t have the password for the network or something, it won’t retain that when restoring from a backup IIRC.

The phone should automatically switch to using the wifi for data. (mine does)

So does mine.

Occasionally when I’m out it picks up an open wi-fi connection which I dont; want to use and then I switch wi-fi off. And then forget to put it back on again when I get home. I’d check sh’es not doen that.

Does she use FaceBook? The Vids on the current version have an “auto download/playback” option, which does what it says. You can turn it off so it only downloads vids she presses/chooses to watch.

I cannot answer your question, but I can say I am using more data on my ip6 with 4g than I ever did on a on my ip5 on 3g. Not an issue as I’m on 20gig.

My usage profile has not really changed at all, I was wondering if it was something to do with compression based on your bandwidth?

Wonder how it would look if you just turned 4g off and just left 3g on?

OP. Setting -> Cellular and scroll down shows data usage by app

I suspect it’s streaming music or updating apps over cellular data link.

My old Nokia 🙁 sniff would go through around 250-300mb a month for just general use emails, bit of browsing etc. This iphone piece of shit uses double that for the same amount of usage! Why??

Has she got some sort of auto backup of photos and/or videos. This would easily get through the data if she’s taking a load of pictures and videos with the new phone.

What phone was she on before?

I moved from a 4 with 500mb 3G allowance, which I never went over unless I knowingly downloaded some big stuff on purpose, to a 6 with 1GB 4 allowance. I’ve gone over both months I’ve had it 🙁 last mont it only took about 10 days to get the 80% warning text.

Therefore using the Settings>Cellular function in the iPhone I narrowed it down to a few route causes
> Podcasts app – Was live streaming if I hadn’t downloaded the episode. This was new behaviour in iOS8 where it would prevent streaming unless on WiFi unless overridden. There isn’t a setting for this any more so the only remedy was to turn off mobile data for the podcasts app
> Backgroup app refresh – Lots of apps were refreshing the background needlessly. I’ve turned them off.
> Games – Lots of games now have video adds which suck bandwidth. Therefore I have turned off mobile data for any apps that only need mobile data to show me adds and don’t need it to function.
> New and shiny – I was using my phone loads more since it was new and worked really quickly

Basically see which apps are using all the data in settings>cellular and turn them off.

My old Nokia sniff would go through around 250-300mb a month for just general use emails, bit of browsing etc. This iphone piece of shit uses double that for the same amount of usage! Why??

Hard to say purely on that basis but a lot more going on inc app updates and almost certainly more usage generally. Web pages today have more graphic content.

This iphone piece of shit uses double that for the same amount of usage! Why??

you bought something based on name so they know you have money to burn 😉

phone doesn’t have the password for the network or something, it won’t retain that when restoring from a backup IIRC.

If you check the “encrypt backup” box when backing up/restoring via itunes (to e.g. go to a new device) it’ll do the passwords too.

Exactly the same happened to me this month. On EE with the free Deezer add-on. Deezer crashed. Couldnt choose the offline option (that I use 99% of the time) and I used 3gigs of data in 4 days. Jeebus. Haven’t used over 2.5 gigs each month in the preceeding 12 months. It was working in the background apparently. Doh. Make sure she turns off the ‘background’. Still had 16 days to my next bill.
Thought EE would be good enough to be let me have a gig for the rest of the month rather than me spend either like 1.99 for 100mb (last 1 day), 5.99 for 2 gig (lasts 7 days) or 15.99 for 10gig. All completely useless for me.
Only been a customer for 10 years. Useless both myself for not noticing and EE for being barstewards.

settings > cellular and scroll to the bottom will tell you how much each app has used.

Settings-> mobile (just looked at mine). The list isn’t sorted by usage which is a shame

I’m on unlimited 4G so don’t restrict my usage in any way, and some top offenders are (numbers for the last 26 Gb of data, not sure what time that covers, if you’re scaling to 2gb data just assume 1/10th of these numbers):

App store 1Gb
Facebook 2.5gb
Mail 768Mb
Google Play Music 5Gb
Podcasts 3.3Gb
Safari 1.3Gb
twitter 4.3Gb
spotify 3.2Gb

Note that some seem oddly high e.g. twitter, cos any links I click there open in the in-app web browser.

I suppose this shows that the free streaming music services aren’t really free or possibly even cheap !

andygreener I think the EE add ons don’t count towards your data allowance. Could be wrong though…

Hmmm lots of food for thought. She had the good sense to turn off mobile data when she got the warning. Wifi in our house so not that. She thought it might be the phone syncing when she first got it, but I told her to set it so it syncs only when on wifi.

It just seems deliberatly confusing IOS. I’ll get her to look at the “settings > cellular ” to see what it is.

Thanks everyone. Very helpful.

It just seems deliberatly confusing IOS. I’ll get her to look at the “settings > cellular ” to see what it is

how much simpler did you want?

jambalaya – Member
I suppose this shows that the free streaming music services aren’t really free or possibly even cheap !

Depends on your tariff and usage, I’d have thought.

I have unlimited data on my phone tariff, very rarely turn wi-fi on at home because my broadband is no quicker than my phone connection most of the time and I use Spotify quite a lot. I also use it at work during the daytime.
No charges thus far, although thinking of paying for premium anyway. Might treat myself in the New Yr.
If you use music streaming pre-dominantly at home, you can just use your wi-fi connection.

Obviously, if you have a 500Mb limit and listen to Spotify all day using that allowance, it ain’t gonna last long.

If its new, there is always a period of “novelty” so expect it to be higher than normal.

She might *think* she’s not changed her browsing habits, but if everyone of her friends says “Omg can i see your new phone, how quick is 4g?” that’s going to quickly rack up.

But in your mind, your browsing “habits” wouldn’t of changed….

You’re not on Virgin Cable broadband and using their hub? My hub crashes so regularly I have turned off cellular data for all apps to prevent 6Music alarm streaming data in the house when wifi has crashed.

Has she got a new boyfriend?

Has she got a new boyfriend?

Doesn’t seem unreasonable as a punishment for watching Netflix 24/7 and exceeding your allowance, but a bit harsh when she’s done nothing wrong, ostensibly.

IMO having data only on when on wifi is a massive PITA and defeats the purpose of having a smart phone!

Really? My kid is happy with his smart phone as a phone when he’s out and a browser/youtube player when he’s in. If you let them have mobile data, then you’ll get BILLS for it!
My son’s phone costs me… £7.50 per month. No more.

Really? My kid is happy with his smart phone as a phone when he’s out and a browser/youtube player when he’s in. If you let them have mobile data, then you’ll get BILLS for it!
My son’s phone costs me… £7.50 per month. No more

But we’ve established that she used to use it with no issues, so it seems the OP is happy paying for whatever usage (maybe not, she may be paying her own bill, not vastly relevant frankly). It seems a little churlish to that end to say “here’s a new phone, now I’m going to disable most of the useful functionality, for no reason whatsoever”.

Yup, I had this problem. ‘upgraded’ to a 4G iphone contract, which costs more per month than the previous 3G iphone contract, and burned through all my data allowance in a couple of days. My service provider doesnt offer unlimited data so thats not an option for me.
Previously I hardly used any of my allowance and being an old fogey I certainly don’t use facebook, youtube, instagram or any of these things out and about.
I learnt that iphone 4G is set to use cellular even when there is wifi available so it does all its back ups etc using cellular.
So I ended up disabling the ‘use 4G’ slider, and going through the cellular usage as described by previous posts and setting most apps to not use cellular data. Solved all the problems.

So I now have a 4G phone which I am paying extra for and which I cant get the benefits from.

Fantastic.

There must be a way to tell it to do backups on WiFi only.

I’m getting my iphone 6 tomorrow so I’ll have a look. I have had a 1gb contract for about a year now and never gone over. With my new phone I have “unlimited” for 3 months as part of a new contract deal, but then goes back down to 1gb (I guess to tempt you into buying more…)

So will be interesting to see what happens here.

“here’s a new phone, now I’m going to disable most of the useful functionality, for no reason whatsoever”.

Glad my boy doesn’t see it that way!

Actually, that reminds me – when I first got the phone I called the provider and they said they could cap the roaming data. OP could do that without destroying his daughter’s life?

Glad my boy doesn’t see it that way!

He might if you decided tomorrow to disable the wifi, only on his phone, because a virus someone contracted meant you’d exceeded your home broadband allowance.

Our home broadband usage shot up last month when BT upgraded it from 1mb/s to 50mgb/s.

I figured it was because now if I watch 30 seconds of a youtube/netflix/grumble video it buffers the whole lot. So if I watch the opening sequence of a few netflix films before deciding on one I could be getting through several GB in a few minutes whilst deciding, and similarly by default I download every spotify album I start listening to as there’s a reception balck hole on my commute, so that’s often 2 albums from the ‘discover’ list before breakfast.

So it could be the same usage, but more ‘wasted’?

changed over my iphone for a new one as did a lot of other people I know in the last few weeks and all had this happen (iphone)

I was told a lot of things like facebook start playing videos in the back ground now for some strange reason

also old routers can be a problem im told ( says the internet) , my home router is over 10 years old and will now not find the phone but worked fine for years with old iphones

but when Im at work its a new router and all is fine

I just have to fart about turning the cellular data on and off all the time now

which is just rubbish

I was told a lot of things like facebook start playing videos in the back ground now for some strange reason

You can switch that feature off.

I went from a 5s on 3g (1gb data) to a 6+ on 4g (2gb data) a couple of months ago, any while I havent checked the data usage stats, I never went over my allowance before, and haven’t since. Though most of my activity is done on wifi, at work or home, and we dont have decent 4g coverage locally, yet. Reasonable 3g though.

“here’s a new phone, now I’m going to disable most of the useful functionality, for no reason whatsoever”.

Glad my boy doesn’t see it that way!

Wait till he realises that all his friends are organising their lives using iMessage, Whatsapp, Facebook messenger or whatever IM client the kids are using these days and he only gets to hear about the plans when he gets on wifi when it’s too late becuase his tight arse ludite parents won’t let him use mobile data.

A smart phone isn’t that smart without the internet, it’s barely even a mobile phone in the modern sense.

possibly iOS 8 update? unlikely to do that over data but you never know..)