AT&T Wireless CEO Hints at ‘Managing’ iPhone Data Usage

[budney]

AT&T Wireless CEO Hints at ‘Managing’ iPhone Data Usage
Mark Sullivan, PC World

Oct 7, 2009 6:11 pm


CTIA Conference, San Diego--AT&T Wireless CEO Ralph de la Vega bemoaned the disproportionate wireless bandwidth usage of a small number of its smartphone customers [read iPhone users] in a speech to wireless industry professionals here today, and hinted at an unpleasant way of dealing with the problem.


Interesting Read
Thanks goes to Rust Duck @ ppcgeeks for posting

[Simon5282]

Has anyone thought about fair pricing? How about five dollars per gigabite of data. Use only one GB, your bill is only five bucks. Someone who uses the average five GB they spend 25 dollars. A bandwidth hog who uses a hundred GB will spend five hundred bucks.

The carriers won't do this because they would rather everyone spend fifty bucks even if they only use one GB. That way they can slap anyone who uses more than five GB outrageous unproportional overage charges. After all, it is easier to piss off the 3% who use the bandwidth than treat the other 97% fair.

[Charlyee]

I am not sure what will be considered "fair". of my total data usage of around 2Gb/month, the usage on AT&T is less than 100 mB. The rest is on WiFi which I find much faster by around 33%.

I am curious as to why more iPhone users don't use WiFi as the alternate data highway. Is there something special/different about how the iPhone uses WiFi?

Just curious

Interesting thread budney, thanks for posting it

Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

[budney]

Gee, thanks Charylee!

With a "always on" connection users probably don't think about using WiFi, Also most of the time the network should be just as quick as WiFi on any 3G PDA phone. I would like to see the break down of the data used from a typical iPhone user, I just can't see how they use that much more data then other PDA users.

[RadioRaiders]

His remarks were pretty vauge, I wouldn't read too much into it. Every network needs to be managed properly. About the "few crowding out the many" remark, I would guess some kind of load-balancing on the cell level. There's alot of different ways to do that, some maybe vendor specific.

...but it's kind of funny, that he's talking alot about the data bottle-neck: data usage grew 5,000x the last few years, that they need to roll out on new spectrum (LTE on 700Mhz) because current spectrum isn't enough .....and then launch a pre-paid "unlimited voice and data" plan for a rock-bottom price of $60/month ...Can their network handle that? ...does the right hand know what the left is doing?

[crood]

The $60 prepaid plan is unlimited voice & text, not data.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by budney

With a "always on" connection users probably don't think about using WiFi, Also most of the time the network should be just as quick as WiFi on any 3G PDA phone. I would like to see the break down of the data used from a typical iPhone user, I just can't see how they use that much more data then other PDA users.

I also have *always on*. It does not use any data other than when actively engaged in downloading E-Mail, updating weather etc., no middle of the night unknown large quantities of data transfer as bobolito mentioned.

It is set so that if WiFi is available then it supercededs AT&T data but I can choose to opt out. I don't know if the IPhone can be set as such, hmm I guess I need to spend some quality time with my friends's iPhone.

[RadioRaiders]

Originally Posted by crood

The $60 prepaid plan is unlimited voice & text, not data.

Thanks for the correction It's T-Mobile who's throwing in the data in their "unlimited" pre-paid package for $50/month. I thought AT&T's included data as well, but seems it's just voice and SMS for $60/month.

[budney]

Originally Posted by Charlyee

It is set so that if WiFi is available then it supercededs AT&T data but I can choose to opt out. I don't know if the IPhone can be set as such, hmm I guess I need to spend some quality time with my friends's iPhone.

I would really like to use my uncles iPhone (as much as I hate Apple) for a bit to understand it better. This whole story is fascinating, and it will be neat to find out who's to blame.

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by Charlyee

I also have *always on*. It does not use any data other than when actively engaged in downloading E-Mail, updating weather etc., no middle of the night unknown large quantities of data transfer as bobolito mentioned.

After hours troubleshooting and researching, I found out that the culprit is the email app. There's a serious bug that develops in some iphones (jailbroken or not) that causes the mail app to engage in extremely large data transfer sessions almost every day at any time. I discovered that many iPhone users have had this problem yet to be acknowledged by Apple, and that this problem has existed since back in the days of firmware 1.1.4 with the first iPhone. I've had this problem for months, but it was never an issue because it always happened overnight when my iphone was connected to the charger, but now it got much worse and it is happening during the day as well, and my battery is draining within hours after it has been fully charged. If you search on the net, the phenomena has been labeled across the Internet as the "iDrain" because when it starts, it drains your iPhone battery from 100% down to 0% in a few hours because the transmitter is continuously working. The user simply notices the iPhone gets inexplicably warm and the battery dies very quickly.

According to my personal research, the only way to fix it is by restoring the iPhone as new, because doing a regular restore reintroduces the bug in the phone. So I have to find a day when I have hours to spare (rare occurrence) to restore my phone as new to see if that takes care of this problem that is rendering my iPhone useless. I've permanently disabled all email accounts because disabling push or setting them to manual pull still does not stop the problem from occurring. Only when disabling all my email accounts, the transmitter stopped wasting my battery (and wasting AT&T's spectrum). So now it looks like we're going to be penalized because Apple has a bug in the email app?

According to my bill, the bulk of my data usage is due to this email bug that will mysteriously transfer 100 or 200 megabytes per night while my personal usage tops 50 MB per day. I am now afraid that my iPhone is going to go over the 5GB limit that AT&T imposes. Should I be penalized for usage I can't control?

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by budney

Gee, thanks Charylee!

With a "always on" connection users probably don't think about using WiFi, Also most of the time the network should be just as quick as WiFi on any 3G PDA phone. I would like to see the break down of the data used from a typical iPhone user, I just can't see how they use that much more data then other PDA users.

WiFi is much faster than 3G. I use it all the time, but mainly only at home. With 3G, I normally top out at 900 kbits downloads using DSL Speedtests. Using WiFi at home I get 5000Kbs, at one home and 10000Kbs at another: it depends on how much I pay for my home connection speed.

Charlyee, it works the same on the iPhone as on your Treo. It switches to WiFi as needed. So I think iPhone users use WiFi as much as anyone else. In fact, I seem to remember an iPhone user taught you the benefits of WiFi.

Bobolito, I've had battery draining 'activity' from mail 3 or 4 times over my 1.5 years of iPhone usage. It normally occurs during the day, with the same symptoms: the activity wheel keeps spinning even though I'm in the 'Home' location...and we know the iPhone doesn't do background tasks. But every time it gets fixed just be restarting the phone. I've never had to restore. I hope that it gets fixed for you! I haven't had this happen with the new 3G, or almost 6 months now.

VF

P.S. each time it occurred after I tried to check mail, never on it's own.

[bobolito]

I read an article that suggests that the problem got much worse with firmware 3.0. Like I said, I noticed this problem months ago, back when I had 2.1. But then again, when I bought my iPhone it came with 2.1. LOL! But back then, the problem was not that bad because it always happened overnight when my iPhone was connected to the charger so it never drained. So I never got my detective hat on to find out what was causing those large downloads overnight. Now that it is happening during the day, I am sometimes walking around my job with a dead phone, or if I happen to catch it on time, I just put it in airplane mode to stop the draining before the battery dies. But the latest I've been doing is to disable all my email accounts. That will effectively stop the bug, but then again, I can't check my email unless I go through Safari. I've done rebooting and as soon as it comes back and it connects to the AT&T network, the transmitter kicks in again non-stop. So that doesn't solve it.

By the way, the iPhone does run some background tasks: Safari, Email, Phone, iPod. Those are the only apps that are allowed to run in the background.

So, bottomline this is an old issue and it just got worse and I'm surprised Apple hasn't acknowledged something so serious.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by bobolito

I read an article that suggests that the problem got much worse with firmware 3.0. Like I said, I noticed this problem months ago, back when I had 2.1.



So, bottomline this is an old issue and it just got worse and I'm surprised Apple hasn't acknowledged something so serious.

I am presuming 3.1 or 3.2 does not alleviate this problem then? It is surprising that Apple has not addressed this, specially since there is no way to switch out a dead battery with a fresh one on the iPhone.

I looked up "IDrain" and what is intersting is most of the steps that are being recommended to minimize battery drain, defeats the purpose of owning a Smartphone. There are also recommendations of putting it on a charger just about everytime your are near one.

Hopefully either you or Apple will come up with a fix soon.

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by Charylee

I am presuming 3.1 or 3.2 does not alleviate this problem then? It is surprising that Apple has not addressed this, specially since there is no way to switch out a dead battery with a fresh one on the iPhone.

I looked up "IDrain" and what is intersting is most of the steps that are being recommended to minimize battery drain, defeats the purpose of owning a Smartphone. There are also recommendations of putting it on a charger just about everytime your are near one.

Hopefully either you or Apple will come up with a fix soon.

I feel that I must state for the record that this is NOT a common problem, at least not the one that bobolito is having. For myself, at dinner time, I still have my battery at 75% or so...with Push on with Exchange and also checking gmail.

So I don't really think that Apple is that concerned about it. I don't really read even people at HoFo talking much about this. And they complain a lot over there. Yes, there is a group complaining about battery life after 3.1...but the problem described is before 3.1 (and I don't think bobo is at 3.1)

Email does not run in background, at least, it does not check email in background...it only checks gmail, for example, on a fetch or manual schedule. Setting it to 'manual' and it will never check for email. My problem, a few times, only started when I checked mail, and it didn't seem to stop checking mail. But that was over 6 months ago.

So before going how a tangent on how Apple does not fix this...the majority of phone users don't experience this the way described. I know about 25 iPhone users directly...and nada one has this.

But if there is a minor fix...one has to upgrade to 3.1.2....but most jailbreakers wont do that yet. So a little premature to blame Apple for a non-fix!

Also, the 'iDrain' posting via Google are all from July 2009, but the one same Michigan source, a third party iPhone repairer...and it is only speculation.

[Charlyee]

viewfly, I am presuming you quoted me by mistake & your post was meant for bobolito.

I was replying to bobolito, feeling his frustration & asking him whether a version upgrade would help, I certainly didn't say anything that bobolito had not already stated.

Btw, I looked at HoFo after you mentioned it & there are many complaints about the battery life some as recent as today. Are they the *same* battery problem as bobolito's? I don't know, to me it's immaterial.

Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by Charlyee

viewfly, I am presuming you quoted me by mistake & your post was meant for bobolito.

I was replying to bobolito, feeling his frustration & asking him whether a version upgrade would help, I certainly didn't say anything that bobolito had not already stated.

Btw, I looked at HoFo after you mentioned it & there are many complaints about the battery life some as recent as today. Are they the *same* battery problem as bobolito's? I don't know, to me it's immaterial.

Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

Nope, I did the quote right. Just using you as a launching post to dismiss a rumor. The postings you are reading on HoFo are from some that say 3.1 ruined their battery life. Bobolito is not yet at 3.1, I believe, so it doesn't apply.

It happens with every upgrade on HoFo. It amazes me how every Apple firmware causes the same problems (battery is now worse) or another thing. Yet, every Jailbreak upgrade happens without problems...

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by viewfly

Nope, I did the quote right. Just using you as a launching post to dismiss a rumor.

I am sorry to appear so dense but what is the rumor?
Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by bobolito

According to my bill, the bulk of my data usage is due to this email bug that will mysteriously transfer 100 or 200 megabytes per night while my personal usage tops 50 MB per day.

After reading your posts, I reset my data counter around 2 pm. I used the phone a bit, but not really that much since I was in meetings all day, and on my notebook during the evening.

Anyhow from 2pm to this morning (4:30am), so over 14 hours, my data counter reads only 5.9 Mb of downloaded data. Uploads were only a tiny 500Kb. I also had MS Exchange on in Push mode. I keep 1 weeks of Mail in synch only. The calendar is set for 6 months backwards synch. Once I did set the mail to Push synch for 1 months overlap...it seemed like it was spinning forever to synch all the in/out etc boxes for the first time. I got impatient, that so i went back to 1 week. But I don't think you have been running Exchange until a few weeks ago for Gmail.

If you have been having such large night time data loads since firmware 2.x, something highly unusual is going on with your phone/firmware/software.

I'd would completely unjailbreak it, go up to 3.1.2 and run with it for awhile, unjailbroken. If the problem persists, go to Apple. I don't know of anyone having this problem with the native email downloading so much data on it's own. If the email application is not in the forefront, it's not checking or downloading email, with the exception of Push or if you are in Fetch Mode (check 15min, or 30min or 1 hour). Someone sending you a ton of MMS photos during the night?

Good luck!

[RadioRaiders]

I would assume a properly configured and functioning iPhone, averaging ~5MB downloaded and ~75% battery at the end of the day sounds normal. Bobo's phone downloading 100MB's of data on it's own and killing that battery sounds like some kind of software problem. Even if it's not a common problem, I doubt Bobo is the only one with this. And besides killing his battery, it's also straining AT&T's network. AT&T may not even be aware of this type of problem. If I recall correctly, the first iPhone 3G transmitted with excessive RF power that caused interference and power drain on AT&T's network. Someone (not Apple) put the iPhone in a test lab and discovered this. Apple quietly fixed the problem shortly after with a software upgrade.

...and in some parallell thinking, I wonder how many smart-phone users (iPhone and others) are consuming large amounts of data without even knowing it? Maybe someone launched some app that constantly connects to the internet (ex: RSS, weather, etc.) and just forgot about it. Or some phone software is constantly requiring fixes/updates/downloads. Since smartphones usually come with data plans, I guess alot of people don't even bother to look at their data consumption. And carriers are usually just busy managing the "data pipes" and don't really bother to look in detail at what is flowing thru it exactly. So smartphones downloading large amouts of data on their own could be somewhat of an undetected problem....

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by RadioRaiders

I would assume a properly configured and functioning iPhone, averaging ~5MB downloaded and ~75% battery at the end of the day sounds normal. Bobo's phone downloading 100MB's of data on it's own and killing that battery sounds like some kind of software problem. Even if it's not a common problem, I doubt Bobo is the only one with this. And besides killing his battery, it's also straining AT&T's network. AT&T may not even be aware of this type of problem. If I recall correctly, the first iPhone 3G transmitted with excessive RF power that caused interference and power drain on AT&T's network. Someone (not Apple) put the iPhone in a test lab and discovered this. Apple quietly fixed the problem shortly after with a software upgrade.

...and in some parallell thinking, I wonder how many smart-phone users (iPhone and others) are consuming large amounts of data without even knowing it? Maybe someone launched some app that constantly connects to the internet (ex: RSS, weather, etc.) and just forgot about it. Or some phone software is constantly requiring fixes/updates/downloads. Since smartphones usually come with data plans, I guess alot of people don't even bother to look at their data consumption. And carriers are usually just busy managing the "data pipes" and don't really bother to look in detail at what is flowing thru it exactly. So smartphones downloading large amouts of data on their own could be somewhat of an undetected problem....

Your second paragraph does raise a very good point. I do think this may be one of the reasons that Apple (and maybe with ATT too) resists running applications in the background or 'multitasking', with the exception of the iPod, Push, notifications and Fetching mail features. Every application closes it's internet connection when terminated.

It may explain why they are starting to take a stronger stance on jailbreaking...to cut down on network overload.

It may not have been the original reason, but it does look like a good reason. Leaving Pandora running in the background and forgetting about it would be a drain on the network, for example. Although I wish that I could do that...since I such a good monitor of my usage. More benign appls like weather, stocks, RSS could be less obvious that they are running.

Thanks for the post.

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by viewfly

I feel that I must state for the record that this is NOT a common problem, at least not the one that bobolito is having.

So I don't really think that Apple is that concerned about it. I don't really read even people at HoFo talking much about this. And they complain a lot over there. Yes, there is a group complaining about battery life after 3.1...but the problem described is before 3.1 (and I don't think bobo is at 3.1)

Of course it is not a common issue, but it is a very serious one. I have found many people complaining on HoFo about it, and also a simple search on Google for the problem returns many forum complainers, blog postings, and even magazine articles discussing the problem. So I seriously doubt this is a rumor. You might want to read this: http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...r_battery_life

Originally Posted by viewfly

Email does not run in background, at least, it does not check email in background...

Yes it does. If you have a way to check the process list on the iPhone, you can tell when Mail is running in the background or not. Since yours is not JB, then you have no way to tell. Mail will check in the background if you have a Yahoo account set to Push, or an Exchange account. Turn off your Exchange acct or turn off your Yahoo account and Mail will not run in the background since there's no need for it. By the way, push mail works because the Mail app has to stay in the background. When I force the Mail process to close, all the sudden Push stops working on Yahoo and Exchange.....hmmm

Originally Posted by viewfly

But if there is a minor fix...one has to upgrade to 3.1.2....but most jailbreakers wont do that yet. So a little premature to blame Apple for a non-fix!

I am on 3.1.2 already and jailbroken.

However, this issue happens to both jailbroken phones and non-jailbroken ones. We are at 3.1.2 and Apple has not fixed this problem yet.

Originally Posted by viewfly

I'd would completely unjailbreak it, go up to 3.1.2 and run with it for awhile, unjailbroken.

I've had my phone unjailbroken many times which is every time I upgrade, but the problem still happens sometimes. But the issue is not jailbreaking the phone. This problem has happened to people that have NEVER jailbroken their iPhones. So this is an Apple problem. No question about it. Just for the record, this doesn't happen everyday, or to everyone. Like I stated before, this is a bug that develops in SOME iPhones (jailbroken or not). However, that should not be an excuse to overlook or dismiss the problem. It is a serious issue that Apple hasn't addressed. I'm willing to bet that the average user would probably go to the Apple store or AT&T and get the iPhone replaced because they think that the battery might be bad, when in reality it is just this Mail app bug going unnoticed. Since Apple hasn't acknowledged the problem, the store reps are not educated about it and therefore they also may believe it is a battery issue and will go ahead and replace the phone if still under warranty. So the customers get another iPhone which probably doesn't have the bug developed in its software yet and they think the problem is solved. For many others, this goes unnoticed because they connect their charger all night so the battery doesn't die, and then during the day the phone behaves normally so they never notice the problem. The first evidence I found about of this issue was when I noticed in my bill unusually large downloads at 2 AM or 3 AM almost every night, ranging from 20MB to 100MB or sometimes more. So if you don't check your bill and have your phone plugged in all night, you can potentially never notice this problem. This might explain why more people haven't complained about this yet, because many may not even know they have the bug.

The only solution that has been posted online is to restore the iPhone AS NEW. So I have to find a day when I have hours to spare to do that. In the meantime, I have to keep on disabling my email accounts whenever this happens, or keep my phone plugged in all the time. I have USB cables at work, at home and in my car so I can charge my phone almost everywhere I am most of the time.

[viewfly]

Bobolito, The point is to try and figure out what is wrong with your iPhone.

Originally Posted by bobolito

Of course it is not a common issue, but it is a very serious one. So I seriously doubt this is a rumor. You might want to read this: iPhone users harangue Apple over battery life

I completely understand your frustration. I do not challenge that the problem is real. That is not the rumor. The rumor is that it is a common problem, and it is not. For those of us that read HoFo, this might sound common. But go on the streets to people who never heard of JB'ing, and it doesn't seem to exist nearly as much. I do not place much faith in HoFo posters, it a junk forum.

Regarding that computerworld article, it quotes the same fellow as Charlyee's article, and all the articles on the web quote the same fellow .It is from July 2009, where it quotes,

"Aaron Vronko, the CEO of Michigan-based Rapid Repair, a firm that fixes iPods and iPhones and sells parts for do-it-yourselfers" - "I don't think it's a hardware issue," he said, "but some interaction within the software that's not quite working as intended. Something is really draining the battery."

It was talking about the 3.0 upgrade, BTW. So apparently 2.x were ok?

Yep, the spark of genius right there, the answer given. Anyone on WA could have said the same. So he is the source of all the 'articles'. No real big help here.

Originally Posted by bobolito

Yes it does. If you have a way to check the process list on the iPhone, you can tell when Mail is running in the background or not. Since yours is not JB, then you have no way to tell. Mail will check in the background if you have a Yahoo account set to Push, or an Exchange account. Turn off your Exchange acct or turn off your Yahoo account and Mail will not run in the background since there's no need for it.

Yes, I know that and I've already said that. Have you tried turning off Push and Exchange ? Does the problem completely go away? What the heck is downloading 200 Mbs?

I am on 3.1.2 already and jailbroken.

Good, but then you jailbroke, and as Aaron says above, " some interaction with software that is not quite working as intended" Why immediately point the finger at Apple? Maybe it is their fault, but maybe it's the third party unapproved appls causing the muck up?

Originally Posted by bobolito

The only solution that has been posted online is to restore the iPhone AS NEW. So I have to find a day when I have hours to spare to do that. In the meantime, I have to keep on disabling my email accounts whenever this happens, or keep my phone plugged in all the time. I have USB cables at work, at home and in my car so I can charge my phone almost everywhere I am most of the time.

So disabling your email accounts fixes the problem in the short time. I have to wonder why a restore as NEW would fix it? That would bring the phone back to it brand new condition - with the native Mail application on board. So if that fixes it, what then mucks it up? At some point one has to add back up software and settings again? Do you think something is carried along? I understand the difference between restore as new and just backup and restore.

I think I can feel as much as an expert as 'Aaron' above. It probably is some software or OS change (i.e. Jailbreaking or the jailbreak applications) that gets added afterwards that screws things up over time. Perhaps it is some official Apple application. That would take a long time to figure out, adding one at a time. But I feel it is unlikely that the native mail application that you restore too, just gets messed up over time on it's own, esp when it is not a common problem.

And it is one thing to spin and check email, while draining the battery. It's another to be downloading 200 Mbytes. What the heck is downloading. Do you have a virus? THAT is really strange.

So if it was me, I'd take a systematic approach, but it would be painful. Do the restore, and add no applications or only ones that you are certain to trust. Don't JB. Use mail and see if it occurs. If that doesn't work, then I would point to the native appls.

People put a lot of faith in 3rd party software, and not Apple's firmware. Serious problems are important to Apple to fix. They are not going to stand there and not fix it...if it is known. However, the $.99 application guy (legit or JB) what has he got to lose?

You certainly have a big problem. I don't know the answer at all. Good luck with it. Somehow you got to sort out the native software vs added software or OS mods, whether legit or not.

Or maybe restore it as new, sell it and get a 3G S!

P.S. Today I left on my WiFi as a roamed around the city. It would connect to WiFi, but in some places it would connect, and look fine, then just spin and spin, draining the battery. Clearly the internet connection wasn't working. Turning it off, fix the problem and it is understandable.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by viewfly

Regarding that computerworld article, it quotes the same fellow as Charlyee's article

Umm, "Charlyee's article"? Charlyee did not quote, link or mention any article!
Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

[viewfly]

Originally Posted by Charlyee

Umm, "Charlyee's article"? Charlyee did not quote, link or mention any article!
Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

Sorry, i meant the term you found by google, iDrain. That was coined, it seems, by the article I found in reference to.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by viewfly

Sorry, i meant the term you found by google, iDrain. That was coined, it seems, by the article I found in reference to.

I didn't find the term, I googled for keyword "iDrain* based on bobolito's post

Originally Posted by bobolito

f you search on the net, the phenomena has been labeled across the Internet as the "iDrain" because when it starts, it drains your iPhone battery from 100% down to 0% in a few hours because the transmitter is continuously working.

Palm850/v0100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11)

[bobolito]

Originally Posted by viewfly

Regarding that computerworld article, it quotes the same fellow as Charlyee's article, and all the articles on the web quote the same fellow.

There are also quotes from other people describing the same exact problem I am describing, saying that in a matter of hours the battery dies.

It was talking about the 3.0 upgrade, BTW. So apparently 2.x were ok?

yes, they are talking about 3.0, but if you research other articles, you will discover that the problem existed since back in the 1.1.4 firmware, and 2.x firmwares were not immune to it. The conclusion from a more extensive research (which I did) is that the problem got worse with 3.0. That is what sparked articles like the one from computerworld.

Yes, I know that and I've already said that. Have you tried turning off Push and Exchange ? Does the problem completely go away? What the heck is downloading 200 Mbs?

Yes, but turning off Push doesn't seem to be sufficient. It is necessary to completely disable the accounts. Yahoo accounts have an on/off switch, while exchange accounts you can individually turn off sync for mail, calendar, and contacts. Everything has to be turned off, or else at any time (especially during overnight hours), the email app will go nuts.

Good, but then you jailbroke, and as Aaron says above, " some interaction with software that is not quite working as intended" Why immediately point the finger at Apple? Maybe it is their fault, but maybe it's the third party unapproved appls causing the muck up?

Yes I jailbroke, but you know what? I've stated that this problem has happened to people who have NEVER jailbroken their phones. From what I've read, this is the mail app stuck sending commands to the network which in return sends data down to the phone, perhaps the same data over and over again which the phone rewrites (if it was new stuff, I would have no free space in my iPhone already). However, for the data counter at AT&T, that is cumulative which is why it goes beyond 100MB sometimes.

But I feel it is unlikely that the native mail application that you restore too, just gets messed up over time on it's own, esp when it is not a common problem.

I have knowledge of programming in several languages, and from my experience I know that it is possible for software to develop a problem once other variables are introduced. Nevertheless, that is still a bug in the software that must be corrected. A well written application must be able to deal with the variety of situations it is presented with, instead of misbehaving. This is my theory of what's happening with the mail app. Perhaps other apps are somehow causing the mail app to do this, but in the end, this is the mail app's problem. 3rd party software vendors can't do anything about this because 3rd party apps are not even running when this happens.

[Charlyee]

Originally Posted by viewfly

Charlyee, it works the same on the iPhone as on your Treo. It switches to WiFi as needed. So I think iPhone users use WiFi as much as anyone else. In fact, I seem to remember an iPhone user taught you the benefits of WiFi.

Question: Can WiFi be turned on in the iPhone when in the Airplane Mode? So basically you could check E-mail, browse the web, check google maps or other location based software without turning the radio on?

Thanks

PS: Sorry for the off topic question.

[bobolito]

Yes, WiFi can be turned on while in Airplane mode.

[bobolito]

By the way, viewfly, are you going to discredit what it says here? Pay attention to the items in bold:

Apple investigates iPhone 3.1 OS battery problems

Apple is investigating reports of poor battery life problems from iPhone 3GS users after they upgraded to the 3.1 OS. The iPhone 3.1 software update delivered many new features, but some users also report that the phone's battery life is severely and adversely affected.

Apple’s support forums are now overflowing with complaints from iPhone 3GS users who updated their phone to the 3.1 software. The messages on the forums are all so familiar—extensive battery drain in a very short space of time. More than 375 replies are now on the respective thread.

Following the river of complaints, Apple is reportedly taking steps to address the poor battery life problem. The iPhone blog is reporting that some iPhone users are now being contacted by AppleCare helpdesk representatives with a list of 11 follow-up questions focusing on batteries.

Apple is also offering for download an unsigned battery life logger, which will collect information about your phone’s battery life. The logger syncs the data with iTunes to send it to Apple for investigation.
Troubleshooting iPhone’s battery problems

Push or Exchange e-mail, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and various App Store applications can deteriorate your iPhone’s battery life, according to various Apple Support reps I have been speaking to.

Like some of the replies on the Apple support forums, Apple support staff suggests that if you experience problems with your iPhone’s battery life you should restore your phone from iTunes. However, plenty of users are reporting that this solution doesn’t work in all cases.

I have also experienced in the past battery problems with both the iPhone 3G and 3GS after updating the OS software, and a plain restore of the phone did not solve it. But after extensive calls to Apple Support, I managed to get the battery back on track only after a fresh download of the iPhone OS onto my computer and then restoring a new phone using the new software.
Apple investigates iPhone 3.1 OS battery problems | iPhone | iPhone Central | Macworld

As you can see, Apple is already investigating the issue, so again, this is something serious and it DID NOT start with 3.0, (despite what the articles say), it just got worse with 3.0, therefore it finally got media (and Apple's) attention, so of course it looks like they are starting to do something about it. Are all these people jailbroken? I doubt all of them are. But as the public becomes more and more aware of the issue, more people will speak up and you'll see the focus of the media shift to this issue more often until Apple offers a solution. Thank God!

[viewfly]

I read through all the complaints on the macforums. I'm happy not to have this problem.
I routinely get 5.6 hours of usage per day. That's within expections.

I often have this 'thought experiment'. I wonder how many people work for Apple. I would guess they all have iPhones since it is a consumer product and not too expensive to own. A pervasive problem over so many years should be picked up easily and internally. By the very people who have the power to fix it!

So why the need to contact outsiders? Perhaps they want to learn how people use their phones and how the use correlates to a problem. The reports on the forums are too uncontrolled to ever fix something. Just curious as Charylee would say.

I sincerely hope that Apple figures it out for all. Again glad that I don't have the problem and I don't know why I don't ! Especially since I've owned 4 iPhones now without this problem. Just lucky I guess.