Bug In iOS 6 Software Is Causing Massive iPhone Data Bills

iOS 6: The Most Expensive Thing To Happen To iPhone Since iPhone

If you’ve managed to get your hands on an iPhone 5, or have recently upgraded to iOS 6, you may be in for a bit of a nasty surprise at the end of the month when you receive your data bill, if you haven’t already. Users of the new software are reporting a massive increase in data usage.

The problem has been picked up by users, some of whom have had their data usage increase up to five times the usual amount. The bug is thought to be caused by the way the new software switches between 3G and wi-fi connections. Several culprits in the new software may be responsible, including the iTunes Match service, iCloud syncing, Photo Stream and a whole host of new features that previously were only available over wi-fi. These features tend to consume a lot of bandwidth, often running in the background, and quietly eating away at your data bundle.

Users have also found that large downloads will continue on cellular if they were started on wi-fi, even if you have specifically told your phone only to do so over wi-fi. The biggest problem though is that the problem can’t be isolated – there seems to be no uniform set of circumstances where the new software is eating data. This may make the problem a little more difficult to address, and Apple have made no new announcements as yet about an incremental iOS update.

It’s no secret that the iPhone is a bit of a fiend for data, which is why most plans come with a data bundle. With conservative use it is often easy to stay within these limits.

One of our staffers here at 2oceansvibe took a look at his bill recently. On iOS 5, average use was around 300MB per month with conservative usage, easily covered by the inclusive bundle. Since upgrading to iOS 6, data use has increased to over 2GB – which with a hefty out-of-bundle data cost of R2/MB, has resulted in a bill seven times the usual amount. We severely doubt the cellphone service providers will care – as the problem is with the firmware, they cannot be held responsible. A payment from Apple is even less likely.

In the meantime, you can download DataWiz to monitor your cellular data usage.

iPhone users – have you experienced a sudden increase? Let us know.

[Source: Guardian]

http://www.slxs.co.za/ Seano

It’s weird you post this today as my 500MB bundle usually lasts the entire month, sometimes with data left over. This month my bundle ran out today, with almost two weeks still left of the month. Crazy
Cam

Mine and my wife’s did exactly the same… have wifi at home and at work, with 250mb 3G data which we hardly use and both our phones data is up! Got sms from Vodacom the other night. Apple needs to sort this out…
http://twitter.com/RobynVeckranges Robyn Veckranges

Thank goodness, I thought I was going crazy when my bundle was suddenly nearly finished!
PJ

Great punt for DataWiz there Seth.
Shawn3d

Guys download an app called Onavo extend. It compresses data so you end up using less. I have been using it for the last year and I get to save about 25% of my data. Only problem is when using instagram…the images get compressed and look sheet,. So I would log onto wifi when using instagram or just disabling Onavo for the brief moment. Hope that helps guys and girls
MattSmith

My iphone4 downloaded 8GB’s overnight and am left with R8000 bill. Podcasts app was to blame, a file that failed to download kept retrying throughout the night!
Kaspaas

FML – have a 500mb/m checked my current statement – R3339.56 – so yeah – tuna and provitas for me for next month
Joe Soap

Wife downloaded 5.5gb in 4 days, bill now R11,000…
FooFunk

Anyone got any updates on this? Twice now ive been fucked over by this, all my data a call credit gone….I like how the networks are keeping quite, they must be laughing!

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