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Major increase in data usage upon upgrade to iPhone SE

So the kid recently upgraded from an iPhone 5 to and IPhone SE, and her data usage has gone thru the roof. Used to be about 1gb/month, now it is about 6gb/month. She has disabled Wifi Assist, she has turned off iCloud backups. Her data usage seems to go mainly to "Social Media," but she swears she is using the device in exactly the same manner as her former device. Any ideas???

Comments

Doggo

Social media could use as much data as streaming videos. Someone could browse a forum for an hour and use significantly less data than the person on Instagram for that same hour. Even though those two users are both using the phone the same (browsing content for an hour), one will use more based on the activity.

We need more detail on what types of social media apps are being used.

octane11

Facebook (via Safari), and Instagram (via Safari). She doesn't use the apps for either of them (IDK why she doesn't).

About the "two users": What I meant to express is that she (the only user) is using this new iPhone SE in the very same manner and amount as she (the only user) was using her old iPhone 5. At least, that's what she thinks. The same amount of "benefit" seems to cost much much more than when operated on the older phone.

Thank you for your fast response, by the way! :-)

octane11

I meant to add that she swears she has "Automatically Start Videos" disabled, but I do not have the physical phone in front of me to check it.

Verizon_Support

octane11, we understand how alarming it can be to see a spike in your daughters data usage after upgrading her device. We truly appreciate all of your efforts in this matter. Allow us the opportunity to further investigate the details. Can you please let us know if she was using the website login besides the social media applications on her prior device? Also, does your daughter connect her device to Wi-Fi when it is available? You will be able to view the trend of your daughters daily data usage by following this link http://vz.to/2hxXiUF and referencing number 2.

SylviaT_VZW

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octane11

Thank you, SylviaT_VZW, for the interest and the ideas.

On her prior device, and on her new device, she uses the website login for Facebook and for Instagram. She does not access either of these through Apps.

Thank you for the link to the data utilization analyzer. I am not seeing any Time Of Use abnormalites to follow up on. Though I will look at the data a little more closely in the coming days.

One thing I do note is that 77% of her data use for this period is for "Social Media and Networking." How is that data tabulated? Since she accesses the social media thru Safari, I would expect the data to be applied to "WEB" or something.

(Others, please note: There is a slight typo in Sylvia's hyperlink it should read "http://vz.to/2hxXiUF" without the "and referencing number 2" part at the end of the link).

Thanks again.

Verizon_Support

octane11, we want to make sure that we figure out what is causing the increase in data usage on your daughters device. For clarification, does she connect to Wi-Fi when it is available? Please have her ensure that Wi-Fi Assist is turned off because this can impact Data usage if the network signal is stronger than the Wi-Fi connection. You can check this by going to Settings > Cellular > Wi-Fi Assist. Do you know if she closes out of the application fully when she is done using it?

YeseniaV_VZW

Follow us on TWITTER @VZWSupport If my response answered your question please click the Correct Answer button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!

octane11

She definitely has "WIFI ASSIST" turned off.

She tells me that she closes out of her browser application (Firefox) when she is done using it, though I have my doubts.

Tidbits

I have a feeling it's iCloud, and iMessage being synced.

octane11

Tidbits: I have a feeling it is something of that nature, too.

I am not getting able to solve it, (300mb at 7:43 this morning), and getting ready to switch, as I am getting no satisfaction from Verizon nor Apple. The question becomes who is the guilty one? Which relationship do I terminate to solve the problem???

Tidbits

iCloud and iMessage uses data and photos sent through iMessage is full quality. That means instead of compressed like MMS(under 1mb usually 250kb) it will send a photo up to 10MB. If you don't delete years worth of iMessages you could have gbs of photos without even realizing it. When you upgrade to a new device all that syncs and Verizon would see iMessages as social media.

Tidbits

Also iCloud should sync things in your photo gallery if you have that turned on too.

octane11

Tidbits: Thank you. That makes perfect sense. Sooooo, once the new device syncs, should the enormous data use stop by itself, or does the entire iMessages file sync every time she gets an new iMessage? We've turned off all the syncing we can find (she doesn't sync to her computer, and I believe she recently stopped automatically backing up the iCloud.

Tidbits

just the old stuff gets synced once. Normally I delete photos and save them to gallery. When I get a new device I make sure I use iTunes to sync my photos.

octane11

Thank you for all your insight!

DAVNOR65

My daughter had a similar problem with iphone 6s plus after an upgrade, but she was on AT&T. Long story short it was a problem with the physical phone caused by the upgrade. She supposedly used something like 10Gb of data while she was sleeping and connected to WiFi overnight. Bottomline, Apple ended up replacing the phone, neither Apple or AT&T tech support could figure out what was causing it use so much data.

Tidbits

DAVNOR65 wrote:
My daughter had a similar problem with iphone 6s plus after an upgrade, but she was on AT&T. Long story short it was a problem with the physical phone caused by the upgrade. She supposedly used something like 10Gb of data while she was sleeping and connected to WiFi overnight. Bottomline, Apple ended up replacing the phone, neither Apple or AT&T tech support could figure out what was causing it use so much data.

Wifi sleeps when the display is off from what I remember. There are multiple instances where data is called and wifi doesn't wake up and uses cellular data. I remember seeing things like that since the iPhone 3G.

DAVNOR65

If it was a known problem why couldn't either Apple or AT&T tech support figure it out? Apple replaced the phone, problem went away.

Tidbits

It's been that way for a while. Apple reps don't know a lot of their own policies also.

For example search for Apple reseller Flex policy and call them. A lot of them have never heard of that policy, but it exists and is enforced.

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