iPhone - Managng Data

Marc

Marc

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Mrs fabs has an iPhone 5S and recently had her latest monthly bill which showed her as exceeding her allowance (1gb) a little over halfway though the billing period As Virgin charge £2 a day once you exceed the limit, it has ended up costing her £24!! Now she is not a heavy data user by any means and the bulk of usage seems to be on weekday mornings when she is on her way to work. Given she works in Central London and a lot of her journey is through areas where there is little, if any, phone signal, I find this rather strange. One example is that,on November 10th between 7.24am & 8.24am, it shows usage at 135mb which sounds ridiculous!

Anyway, when I looked at the settings on her phone, it allows her to reset her data usage reading at any time but she has to remember to do it at the right time in order to properly manage it. On my HTC, I can set a date (eg, 13th of the month) and it will automatically reset at the same time each month. I can also set it to alert me when my limit has been reached and/or when I am close to it. Is there no way to do this with the iPhone?

I'm with EE and, when my limit is reached, my internet is stopped and I have an option to purchase more data so Virgin is a bit of a rip off IMO>
 
Vodafone lets you know when you are reaching the limit. They then offer youthe option to buy extra data, careful though they sometimes put this on a rolling payment, it's cheaper to to change your tariff. ( having said that when it was pointed out what they had done they did refund the overcharge )
 
Chappers said:
Vodafone lets you know when you are reaching the limit. They then offer youthe option to buy extra data, careful though they sometimes put this on a rolling payment, it's cheaper to to change your tariff. ( having said that when it was pointed out what they had done they did refund the overcharge )
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Yeah, that seems to be the norm. Unfortunately, she's stuck with Virgin for the next 12 months!
 
minnnt said:
Just had a quick look and there is one called 'my data manager' which seems to have good reviews.
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Yes, that's the one I found and have passed on to her.

Still can't work out how her data usage has jumped so suddenly as to use it all up barely 2 weeks into the billing period.
 
Personally I don't use the data allowance on my phone and leave it switched off. I connect the phone to home wifi each day so if anything needs updating it can do it.
That way I don't get any unpleasant bills.
 
minnnt said:
It is strange. It isn't a rogue app doing updates or syncing is it?
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That was my thought. I'll get her to download the app and see if anything comes to light.

David_H said:
Personally I don't use the data allowance on my phone and leave it switched off. I connect the phone to home wifi each day so if anything needs updating it can do it.
That way I don't get any unpleasant bills.
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We both connect to Wi-Fi when at home but she had updates set to mobile data so has turned that off so we'll see if that helps. Strange that it hasn't been an issue in previous periods though.
 
fabs said:
No. She has a satnav for the car. As far as I can tell, Facebook has the biggest usage and she doesn't play the videos.
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A recent update to the Facebook app introduced a "find wifi" function. If she's activated that it will be sending data to Facebook and tracking her movements.
 
Turn off mobile data and see what apps complain when you are away from wifi
 
Delete the Facebook app altogether. It works fine through safari. My phone had much better battery life once I'd got that junk off it.

The mobile data section shows what apps have mobile data access and how much each has used. You can turn each app off individually.

The wifi function that fills in for crap wifi will also cause data usage to jump. As your home broadband was off for several days then that may also have been a factor this month in why data use is much higher.
 
Check for WiFi assist. This is an option which switches to mobile data when wifi is ( deemed by the iPhone) is poor. You'll find it under MOBILE DATA and right at the bottom of all the apps listed. I think it's turned on by default . Had a similar problem with sons iPhone 6 and this turned out to be the problem
 
srichards said:
Delete the Facebook app altogether. It works fine through safari
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Don't think she'll go for that, she prefers the functionality of the app

srichards said:
The mobile data section shows what apps have mobile data access and how much each has used. You can turn each app off individually.
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Yep, that's how I knew FB was the biggest usage.

srichards said:
As your home broadband was off for several days then that may also have been a factor this month in why data use is much higher.
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This is from before that though and the biggest usage was hen she was on her way to work + some in the middle of the night which is strange as it would have been connected to the Wi-i.
 
Chappers said:
Check for WiFi assist. This is an option which switches to mobile data when wifi is ( deemed by the iPhone) is poor. You'll find it under MOBILE DATA and right at the bottom of all the apps listed. I think it's turned on by default . Had a similar problem with sons iPhone 6 and this turned out to be the problem
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Cool, she's switched that off as well. She's downloaded the data manager app so will be interesting to see the usage going forwards.

She says to thank you all for your help
 
All you are doing is turning off data through her provider not wifi.
 
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