Getting data info off an iPhone

[Proud Public Servant]

I hope this is the right place to post something like this; if not, maybe you can point me in the right direction. (Go ahead, make your NSA joke now. I'll wait... )

Long story short: five days ago, my wife's iPhone, on its own, used a massive amount of data. Is there any way anyone knows of figuring out what it was doing?

Long story long: We're about to go over limit on our Verizon data plan, which is unusual for us. Precisely because it's unusual, I decided to scrutinize our data usage and figure out what happened. What I discovered is a huge instance of data usage -- and by huge I mean 1/8 of our total usage across 3 phones, and 5x as much as any other instance of usage -- occurred last Sunday night on my wife's phone. Overnight. While we were asleep.

So I'm thinking that's pretty weird, because this is the kind of data usage (250 MB) that usually requires some kind of active use, not just the usual passive app updating that can happen overnight; plus, nothing's really different about my wife's phone, but this has never happened before.

So I call Verizon. They can see the data spike, but can offer no information as to why it happened; apparently, they just don't have that kind of visibility on phone activity. I ask reasonably, if the phone itself maintains a log of its activities; the Verizon rep says she doesn't think so.

So, again: Is there any way anyone knows of figuring out what the phone was doing?

Thanks in advance!

[NYC_SKP]

1. I would trust Apple to know better than Verizon about how to access activity logs.

Search the apple user forums and see if others have had a similar problem.

It might be settings like iCloud or maps, or stuff running in the background that's using up bandwidth.

[Proud Public Servant]

2. Yep, I'm doing this too

The odd thing about it being potentially being stuff running in the background is that it's never happened before, and it hasn't happened since. We're really puzzled.

But I'm off to search Apple forums. Thanks!

[sir pball]

3. Make sure WiFi is always on when you're at home.

It won't stop whatever's sucking down the data (though 250MB isn't THAT much if something got a major update), but in most cases downloads will preferentially use the WiFi if it's available, precisely to save your cellular data usage. There's probably an option somewhere to only allow updates over WiFi but I don't use iOS so I wouldn't know.

[Proud Public Servant]

4. We do

However, one problem appears to be that when an iPhone goes to sleep (screen goes dark), the wifi shuts itself down. The software can still work in the background, but is now doing everything over the 3G or 4G. We assume that's what happened in our case, and we think we've figured out teh fix (leaving teh phone plugged in at night so that it doesn't go to sleep); now we're just trying to figure out what the nature of the data download was, especially since it was unique in our experience. It's surprising how hard it is to get this simple piece of information. O brave new world!

[sir pball]

5. Yow. That's quite brain-dead behavior

Not like WiFi is a huge battery hog...mine stays on regardless of sleep state, I had one major update over 4G once and never did that again.

The inaccessibility is a big reason I don't like iOS; even with a jailbreak it's hard to really get proper administrative access to the device. It's a principal reason I've stuck with Android*, a good AOSP ROM is as navigable and accessible as any other UNIX system. Makes me worry about the future of OS X..

* - not starting the holy war. To each his own, just explaining why I chose what I did.

[Proud Public Servant]

6. Android user here to

Chose it (Galaxy 3) for screen size and ease if use for my big hands/pudgy fingers, but I'm now seeing many advantages to the OS after this episode.