iPhone 3G

Fido

Fido

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I topped up my iPhone with £15 on 21 September. I haven't used it since. Today I discovered my balance was NIL. I'm told it's for internet usage. I have changed nothing. The phone picks up my emails through my home wi fi.

Somethings up. It has to be something to do with my emails being picked up other than through my wi fi. I'm in touch with O2. Anyone familiar with the problem?
 
Isn't the iPhone constantly "phoning home" unless you specifically turn all the data functionality off altogether? At O2 PAYG data rates that will be about £0.50 per MB (unless they got dramatically cheaper)

You might want to look at a different price plan - I'm paying £5/month for 1GB of data... sure I pay per call and per text, but since I send about 12 texts a year and make about 3 calls a year it's peanuts...
 
Well whatever it is... it's done in £15 worth of data for you in a week... is there a data monitor app you can install?

Me? I'd give it a restart to make sure there's not something running in the background eating data - like Safari I think will continue to run and refresh pages unless you press the home button for 10 secs rather than just a touch.
 
That'll almost certainly be it. The last update allowed you to have other programs running in the background rather than one at a time – unless you have unlimited internet access on your iPhone ( :D), you could get stung by inadvertently leaving them on.

This can be a major problem if you go overseas, obviously.

Lipsy
 
This should sort it, IF that's the problem:

(Go to) Settings>General>Network> Data roaming on/off

Set to 'off' when you leave your house… Sorted.

Hope that helps.

Lipsy
 
Yeah, that would have been it. It allows for you to leave programs (e-mail, Safari, etc) to run in the background… So you leave your Wi-Fi network and your phone connects to the 3G network without you realising.

Switching the Data Roaming off when you leave your home will stop that from happening.

Lipsy
 
Lipsy said:
Yeah, that would have been it. It allows for you to leave programs (e-mail, Safari, etc) to run in the background… So you leave your Wi-Fi network and your phone connects to the 3G network without you realising.

Switching the Data Roaming off when you leave your home will stop that from happening.

Lipsy
Click to expand...


It's not data roaming that needs switching off - that only applies if you're roamed onto another network (eg. abroad)... it's cellular data that needs switching off.
 
Yep, you're quite right. It's all about switching Cellular Data that needs switching off.

Sorry - I was in between eating my dinner... My bad, etc.

Lipsy
 
Seems I might have discovered why I have been charged for internet access using my iPhone.

To recap - I have rarely used my iPhone to access the internet. In any event I thought that I could do this for free using my home wi fi or a free wi fi when out of the house. It seems that this is not the case.

A few days ago I connected my iPhone to my iMac and downloaded the latest software - 4.1. At £3 per Mb my balance went. I'll not be rushing for the next upgrade.
 
That's really strange…

Surely the download comes through your iMac and then into a connected iPhone? Pretty certain that's how I installed the new OS…

Still think that you should think about switching off Cellular Data when you leave your Wi-Fi zone. As I said, it's not something that I worry about because I have all the trimmings on my phone, but it does seem weird.

Lipsy
 
Sorry Peter that doesn't add up - I think O2 have lost the plot...

The iPhone 3G iOS 4.1 upgrade weighs in at 300 odd megabytes to download - so actually if you did the download on O2 PAYG you'd owe O2 about £900 in data charges...

There is nothing at all that they can (or should) care about you using data on the WiFi (or when docked to your computer) - whether it's at Fido Mansions or at Dave's Coffee Shop... that has nothing at all to do with O2. O2's sole involvement here is to give you a mobile signal so you can call Mrs Fido and tell her to hurry up at the cake shop and/or to provide horrifically expensive internet when you're not connected to WiFi that you paid for separately.

Here's an analogy why it doesn't add up: You go to Sainsbury's and buy 12 bottles of wine. You get home and discover that Waitrose saw you do it and they charged you as well...

I'd be voting with my feet (and wallet) right about now.
 
Thanks for this guys. As you will appreciate, I'm clueless about the nuts and bolts of technology. I've turned off all I can that might cause me a problem.

I'll continue with my enquiries and consider other options.
 
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