iPhone SE excessive data use

ms wivanee · Jul 30, 2017

Since getting my iPhone SE my data has gone up from 25G per month to 40G! I am not using my phone any differently than I did my previous phone, which wasn't an iPhone. For example: I used 500mb in an afternoon yesterday and all I was doing was messaging my son, no video. No one else in the house was using it. It seems like there is data usage running in the background somehow. I'm just not techie enough to understand what I'm doing. Please, can someone tell me what to do? In mega-simple tech language please.

zstairlessone · Jul 30, 2017

What was your old phone? The SE may be downloading higher quality pictures and movies/YouTube videos than the old one

camabe216 · Jul 30, 2017

Have you turned of Wi-Fi assistans in settings ?
If you have not it can be one reason you use more data.
If the phone think the Wi-Fi signal is a bit to low it switch to mobile networks and draws data and you think you are on Wi-Fi because you are home.
This setting is activated as standard and should be turned off for most of us not having unlimited data plan.

ms wivanee · Aug 1, 2017

zstairlessone said:
What was your old phone? The SE may be downloading higher quality pictures and movies/YouTube videos than the old one

My old phone was an android phone. Yes I agree with the pics and I don't watch too many youtube vids but the other night I was only messaging my son and it used 500mb. At the time I was on my macbook and my iphone was on wifi but i wasn't using it. I'm just wondering if its running some sort of background data. I've switched off notifications on most of the apps now so we'll see how that goes but it can only be the iPhone that is doing this as all was ok before I had it.

ms wivanee · Aug 1, 2017

camabe216 said:
Have you turned of Wi-Fi assistans in settings ?
If you have not it can be one reason you use more data.
If the phone think the Wi-Fi signal is a bit to low it switch to mobile networks and draws data and you think you are on Wi-Fi because you are home.
This setting is activated as standard and should be turned off for most of us not having unlimited data plan.

I have turned off wifi now. Initially I thought that was best to leave it on because I thought it would not use my data. Now I am confused. I only have unlimited data after midnight.

camabe216 · Aug 1, 2017

ms wivanee said:
I have turned off wifi now. Initially I thought that was best to leave it on because I thought it would not use my data. Now I am confused. I only have unlimited data after midnight.

I didn’t mean that you should turn off Wi-Fi.
If you got to settings and choose mobile data.
In next menu in mobile data you scroll almost all the way down and set Wi-Fi assist to 0
That way your phone stays longer on Wi-Fi so it hopefully draws less mobile data.

ms wivanee · Aug 2, 2017

camabe216 said:
I didn’t mean that you should turn off Wi-Fi.
If you got to settings and choose mobile data.
In next menu in mobile data you scroll almost all the way down and set Wi-Fi assist to 0
That way your phone stays longer on Wi-Fi so it hopefully draws less mobile data.
View attachment 34912

Yes I have done that. My phone doesn't have the 'o' though but it's off. Thanks. I've never had an iPhone before, it does take a while to understand it. Intuitive to some but I have to have things spelt out simply.