iPhone Data Phantoms

[graylocks]

my brother is enjoying having an iPhone - much to his surprise - but in just a week he's racked up 91 of his 300mb. i told him to slow down, little fella. he has very few apps and has not streamed anything.

i went through his settings tonight and the only thing i could see to turn off was push mail and location services that he doesn't really need like the Compass app.

now here's the real mystery: i reset his cellular data usage in settings about 90 minutes ago. he hasn't left the house where he has wifi. he doesn't even remember picking up the phone since i left. yet, when he peeked into settings 16kb of cellular data had been used since i left. how is this possible given the parameters i just stated?

[Carm]

Cell phones are constantly sending and receiving data. To find the nearest antenna, etc..
Like it or not.

J. Carm

[cbelt3]

300mb? Yikes. I would recommend he turn off data in settings and only turn it on when he needs it. I use a bit over 1Gb a mknth, and I am reasonably careful.. No utube, netflix, etc..

[graylocks]

cbelt3 wrote:
300mb? Yikes. I would recommend he turn off data in settings and only turn it on when he needs it. I use a bit over 1Gb a mknth, and I am reasonably careful.. No utube, netflix, etc..

although i am thinking of spending the additional $5 and moving up to 300mb, i have been living well enough on 200mb for the last year and a half. it took me a while to figure out what to tweak and what i could and could not do but now i rarely use even 175mb a month and i do not have cellular data turned off. one month i did go over; should have stuck to streaming one sitcom but nooooo, i had to watch two on that trip!

i'd move up to 300mb because sometimes when i'm walking the dog i want to stream Pandora or NPR more often.

[Spock]

To find out who the data hog is you could try Onavo.