Sleeping iPhones Send Phantom Data

Stoobalou writes with a story that got started earlier this month when iPhone users in the US and the UK noticed that their phones seemed to be sending large data bursts via 3G overnight. (Providers are ending unlimited contracts, so iPhone users are paying more attention to how much data they are using.) The discussions began on MacOSRumors and an Apple discussion forum. Thinq.co.uk makes this guess as to what is going on, but doesn't offer much in the way of substantiation: "The simple fact of the matter is — as far as we can tell — that the iPhone's push notifications and other small transfers of data are totted up throughout the day and the total for all of those notifications is added up after dark and sent to your airtime provider while your phone is sleeping. If these tiny amounts of data were individually listed your bill would probably be the size of a telephone directory. The reason it is using the 3G network rather than Wi-Fi is that all iPhones up to and including the 3Gs turn off Wi-Fi push functionality while the phone is in sleep mode, in order to preserve battery life. The iPhone 4, incidentally, has better power management so will not need to do this."

Comments

Tinfoil hat mode

[morgan_greywolf]

The iPhone 4, incidentally, has better power management so will not need to do this.

Combine this news with the timing of the AT&T 2GB cap announcement with the release of iPhone 4, and well, it smells like a forced upgrade.

Re:Tinfoil hat mode

[recoiledsnake]

If you are extremely worried about this, just put your device into "airplane mode" before putting it to sleep. It won't try to talk to anything at all.

Won't that kill phone calls too? People might not get many phone calls at night, but the whole point of a phone is to alert people in cases of rare but important emergencies.

Re:Tinfoil hat mode

[TyFoN]

Can't you just put a "turn 3g on/off" widget on one of the home screens?
No need to put it in airplane mode to kill the cellular data traffic..
well on my android at least.
Same with wifi and gps :)

Re:Here I go blowing some more points

[LWATCDR]

You got modded down for the Foxconn bit sparky.
Foxconn build stuff for HP, Cisco, Nintendo, and I think Microsoft.

That comment was clearly a troll and unbalanced. So yea it was both a flamebait and a troll.
Get over the persecution complex.

Re:Who cares about 3G usage?

[Cimexus]

That seems odd though, because you'd think such behaviour would have to be carrier-specific. I.e. AT&Ts systems would have to know to expect such updates from the iPhone and rely on the iPhone to monitor its usage.

But the iPhone in other countries is sold completely unlocked and you can whack any SIM card in it and use it on any network. The network doesn't know that you're connecting from an iPhone or any other 3G/HSDPA device. So the network wouldn't know to listen for these iPhone data updates (and would be keeping track of data usage on the network side like it would for any other device).

I don't own an iPhone, so this may be something completely obvious. But it sounds to me like the US iPhone software/firmware is different from the software run on non-US devices (i.e. there's a "AT&T-locked" version for the US which contains this data reporting feature, and a 'regular' version which does not, for use internationally)

Re:Here I go blowing some more points

[Cimexus]

Depends if you think of the phone as a 'portable personal computing device', or really just 'an appliance'.

Like you, I couldn't stand anyone telling me what software I could or could not run on my personal computer (running Linux or Windows or whatever). It's a ~personal~ microcomputer which I should be able to make run any arbitrary code I desire to feed into it. I can even write my own software for it.

Some might also consider a phone to be the same - a completely open bit of personal hardware that they should be allowed to do with as they please.

OTOH I think a lot of people out there (not saying I'm one of them) consider a phone as merely an appliance. They buy it in the knowledge that its not an 'open' device you can do what you want with. But they don't care. I mean ... they don't really care that I can't run arbitrary code on their DVD player or their microwave or their car stereo system or whatever. And they think of a phone as being in the same class of device - they just want it to work and don't have a desire to do anything more fancy with it.

Apple has been successful selling such locked down products to that kind of consumer. You (and I) disagree with that approach, but there are good alternatives out there, so there's no real reason to get worked up about it. If I don't like it, I won't buy it.

The 'locked to a carrier' thing is also strictly a US thing. In my country (and most others) you can just whack any old SIM card in an iPhone and it will work on any network like any other phone. I should also point out that Apple's actual ~computers~ (i.e. Mac OS X running laptops and desktops) are still open platform 'personal computers' ... indeed these days you can even run Windows or Linux on them). So I don't think the lock-ins pervade every product they sell. Just the iPad/iPhone/iPod/etc.

But you're right - you shouldn't be modded as troll for discussing these things. They are legitimate concerns with Apple's products. But I just think that you are not Apple's target market - you want a computer when they are really just trying to sell an appliance.