What's up with my phone?

November 23, 2015 9:06 AM

Using my iPhone 5S on Ting, I seem to have some data usage every day. This occurs even on days when my phone never leaves the house, where we have good wifi coverage. (The "wifi assist" that snuck in with the new ios was disabled long ago.) It's never very much data - usually around .02 megabytes - so it isn't impacting my bill, but the fact that it occurs at all is puzzling and I'd love to understand why. Can anyone help?
posted by DrGail to Technology (7 answers total)

Sometimes in the time between when I wake my iPhone up (hit the button on the top) and I put my passcode in to unlock it, it's not connected to our home WiFi. Could that be what's happening?
posted by Lucinda at 9:12 AM on November 23, 2015

That might be a good question for the Ting subreddit.

While it may not (and probably isn't) a Ting specific problem, people there are usually pretty knowledgeable about data leakage.
posted by Sleddog_Afterburn at 10:19 AM on November 23, 2015

This isn't specific to Ting, but do you have any location services on all the time? Go into Settings > Privacy and turn them off individually to see if it makes a difference. I had several such as Zillow and Mapquest running all the time in the background and I noticed a wee difference in data usage when I turned them all off.
posted by the webmistress at 11:24 AM on November 23, 2015

I'm pulling this out of my fundament, but I've often noticed that my iPhone appears to re-connect to WIFI when I pick it up after not using it. I suspect that it might be doing some things like iMessage and e-mail polling over the mobile network.
posted by wotsac at 1:13 PM on November 23, 2015

A hiccup in your wifi network that causes the phone to switch over to cellular data for a very short while?
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 1:31 PM on November 23, 2015

After re-reading the thread, I'd second Lucinda's answer.

Also, it's worth pointing out that you can disable Mobile data in your settings to avoid any usage if this did bother you.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 1:34 PM on November 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

I turn off data when I am not using it, at bedtime or for long drives. I leave my phone out of my sleeping room, entirely. I don't sync anything. Location is always turned off. Facebook messenger sometimes pops up, I think I fixed that.
posted by Oyéah at 6:15 PM on November 23, 2015