High usage of software update over cellular?

[silentjae]

My carrier (Bell Canada) has no idea what is going on, and I'm the first customer to complain apparently. I've contacted Apple support and similarly, they have no clue either. They gave me a case number and are looking into it - I'll keep you posted if they find a solution.

Oh, and yeah, forced reset didn't fix it either...

 

[snyp1193]

My carrier (Bell Canada) has no idea what is going on, and I'm the first customer to complain apparently. I've contacted Apple support and similarly, they have no clue either. They gave me a case number and are looking into it - I'll keep you posted if they find a solution.

Oh, and yeah, forced reset didn't fix it either...

I’m on Koodo and first Apple support blamed Koodo for pushing software updates but when I reached out to them they said they don’t push software updates of this size, especially to iPhones over cellular. It has to be an iOS issue. The apple support guy at the Genius Bar said he would escalate the case.

 

[snyp1193]

This happened again today with a 500MB eSIM from GlobaleSIM I was testing out. I was on wifi the entire time and I noticed the network bars kept going up and down, then I remembered it shuts off the data provisioning once you’re maxed out (it gets stuck on 3G at full bars and says “Could not connect to cellular network”)…and low and behold the settings showed 144MB used on “Software Update”…even with my phone being on wifi the entire time!

 

[Cinimod1000]

Surely this is a bug. I don't seem to have the issue. I am sure you have all setup Cellular preferences in Settings, but just in case I see a particular setting under Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options > Data Mode. The text there explains those settings. Of course, this could well be buggy and not behave as expected

 

[snyp1193]

Surely this is a bug. I don't seem to have the issue. I am sure you have all setup Cellular preferences in Settings, but just in case I see a particular setting under Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options > Data Mode. The text there explains those settings. Of course, this could well be buggy and not behave as expected

There is no 5G with the carriers I’m using so I don’t see this page. These preferences are for 5G only.



It should not be doing any software update over cellular unless you specifically tell it to.

 

[antibolo]

Came here to report the same problem. So far "Software Updates" has wasted 1.2GB in my current billing month despite not having ever performed OS updates while not on WiFi. Very frustrating!

I've disabled all options in "Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates" just now. Hopefully that will be enough, but it's ludicrous that there's seemingly no option anywhere to restrict it to WiFi only.

This problem seems to have started only this month. I would guess it started with 16.2? Don't think I had it with 16.1.

 

[snyp1193]

Came here to report the same problem. So far "Software Updates" has wasted 1.2GB in my current billing month despite not having ever performed OS updates while not on WiFi. Very frustrating!

I've disabled all options in "Settings > General > Software Update > Automatic Updates" just now. Hopefully that will be enough, but it's ludicrous that there's seemingly no option anywhere to restrict it to WiFi only.

This problem seems to have started only this month. I would guess it started with 16.2? Don't think I had it with 16.1.

I have noticed it starting with 16.2 since I was on vacation and had limited data using eSIM. But the problem may have started at least as far back as 16.0…it’s super frustrating.

It also happens with automatic updates turned off.

I spoke with two senior advisors, Apple Store genius guy and they haven’t figured out what’s causing it and don’t seem to want to escalate this up to their engineers to take a look. They made me do a network reset and a clean restore from my computer but the problem persists.

 

[antibolo]

Update: Reported usage for "Software Updates" is now at 1.5GB, up 0.3 since I disabled all automatic updates yesterday.

What the hell, Apple?

I'm going to be stuck needing to disable Cellular Data whenever I'm not actively using it. This is absurd.

 

[snyp1193]

Update: Reported usage for "Software Updates" is now at 1.5GB, up 0.3 since I disabled all automatic updates yesterday.

What the hell, Apple?

I'm going to be stuck needing to disable Cellular Data whenever I'm not actively using it. This is absurd.

Do you happen to have an Apple Watch? That’s the only thing I can think besides a bug that’s eating data.

 

[antibolo]

Do you happen to have an Apple Watch? That’s the only thing I can think besides a bug that’s eating data.

Nope, never had one.

One common thing I am seeing in this thread though, is that we all seem to be Canadians... Different carriers, though (I am on Fido). But that's probably just a consequence of the crappy state of cell plans in Canada...

 

[snyp1193]

Nope, never had one.

One common thing I am seeing in this thread though, is that we all seem to be Canadians... Different carriers, though (I am on Fido). But that's probably just a consequence of the crappy state of cell plans in Canada...

That could be but I had this happen in UK using RedTeaGO eSIM while connected to O2/Vodafone…I don’t think it’s carrier/region specific. I really doubt our carriers are pushing hundreds of megabytes of false software updates…it feels like an iOS bug perhaps related to the new “Security Responses and System Files” feature that came out recently.

 

[silentjae]

I spoke to both Bell and Apple - they keep blaming each other, and none of them know what is actually going on. I guess it's not a wide spread issue. They both seemed surprised to hear about it.

Good thing is (for me at least), it hasn't happened in days now and my data seems to be behaving as it should...but who knows for how long.

 

[snyp1193]

I spoke to both Bell and Apple - they keep blaming each other, and none of them know what is actually going on. I guess it's not a wide spread issue. They both seemed surprised to hear about it.

Good thing is (for me at least), it hasn't happened in days now and my data seems to be behaving as it should...but who knows for how long.

Mine has gone up 10MB in the past few days..it’s not consistent. Sometimes it takes a few weeks and you’ll see few hundred MBs out of no where. I’m not confident this problem won’t happen again.

 

[antibolo]

In any case it's very doubtful that the carrier would have anything to do with this, it's not their job to push software updates, beyond the small bit of info that describes some metadata about the connectivity and available services.

 

[snyp1193]

I have a follow up meeting with the senior advisor I’ve been working with on Sunday and I will push for it to be reviewed by an engineer.

 

[antibolo]

I think I found the source of my issue.

In Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options there is a Low Data Mode option that was NOT enabled. Is this a new option? I don't recall seeing that before, I thought that was only an option for WiFi connections, while cellular always implied the equivalent of low data mode. I guess that might have been added recently, but Apple made it disabled by default, for some stupid reason.

Anyway, I'll report here if I see another spike in "Software Updates" usage again.

 

[snyp1193]

I think I found the source of my issue.

In Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options there is a Low Data Mode option that was NOT enabled. Is this a new option? I don't recall seeing that before, I thought that was only an option for WiFi connections, while cellular always defaulted to low data mode. I guess that might have been added recently, but Apple made it disabled by default, for some stupid reason.

Anyway, I'll report here if I see another spike in "software updates" usage again.

It’s been there since 2020 and never toggled on by default. Let us know if this helps though..but I feel we shouldn’t need to do this if it wasn’t behaving this way prior to iOS 16.

 

[antibolo]

It’s been there since 2020 and never toggled on by default. Let us know if this helps though..but I feel we shouldn’t need to do this if it wasn’t behaving this way prior to iOS 16.

Huh, weird.

In any case, regardless of this issue, I'd rather have Low Data Mode enabled. I'm still getting push notifications, so it seems like a reasonable mode to avoid unnecessary data usage while not sacrificing too much functionality, if any.

 

[virtuatony]

I also have this problem.

I recently got a work iPhone 14 on Telus with a 5GB 5G plan, and have a personal iPhone 13 Pro on Koodo with a 50GB LTE plan. Both are on 16.3 with the 14 on low data mode, since January 31st it's used 1.1GB for software updates, I reset the 13 pro usage which is not low data mode on the 6th to match the plan and it has only used 17.7MB for updates. They were both on the default App Store updates/cellular data settings but I've just disabled all update settings in the App Store menu and turned off cellular data there too for the 14.

This is really annoying since I normally do not use the work phone for data usage, but if it continues at the rate of 500MB every few days when it does these "updates" I'll be out of data soon.

 

[snyp1193]

I also have this problem.

I recently got a work iPhone 14 on Telus with a 5GB 5G plan, and have a personal iPhone 13 Pro on Koodo with a 50GB LTE plan. Both are on 16.3 with the 14 on low data mode, since January 31st it's used 1.1GB for software updates, I reset the 13 pro which is not low data mode on the 6th to match the plan and it has only used 17.7MB for updates. They were both on the default App Store updates/cellular data settings but I've just disabled all update settings in the App Store menu and turned off cellular data there too for the 14.

This is really annoying since I normally do not use the work phone for data usage, but if it continues at the rate of 500MB every few days when it does these "updates" I'll be out of data soon.

I wonder if this is a new Canadian carrier scheme to get people to buy more data now that their profits are down from cheaper plans over the holidays

 

[virtuatony]

I wonder if this is a new Canadian carrier scheme to get people to buy more data now that their profits are down from cheaper plans over the holidays

With all the complaints about iOS 16, I'm leaning more towards thinking this is a bug and Apple's software teams are too busy working on other things to focus on catching these things. But the reports from you and other posters about how the carriers, and Apple are not even trying to help with this is disappointing.

 

[snyp1193]

I bought another RedTeaGO eSIM for testing and it consumed 305MB in software updates today…

My Apple advisor hasn’t been much helpful. She kept referring to generic Apple support docs, blaming it on the carrier or on “app updates”. I got her to send a feedback ticket to see if engineering team says anything.

 

[Kleinebeche]

I am also experiencing the same issue, Canadian, travelling using esim for data , iPhone 14 pro. Another person using iPhone XR , same esim setup is not having this issue.

 

[doboy]

Personally not suffering from this issue, but for those that do, maybe reset the phone and try using it without restoring from backup?

 

[snyp1193]

Personally not suffering from this issue, but for those that do, maybe reset the phone and try using it without restoring from backup?

Doesn’t help I tried. It’s an iOS or carrier bug.