“The latest company to get wrapped up in China bandwidth complaints is Apple, as state television network CCTV recently aired a report that accuses the iPhone of passively ‘stealing’ as much as US$10 of bandwidth every month,” C. Custer reports for Tech in Asia.
“CCTV reports that it put ten phones to the test by putting them on standby for 120 hours while tracking their data usage via China Mobile’s official site,” Custer reports. “Ten phones were tested and virtually all of them wasted some data – Sony and Nokia phones burned through about 4 MB each during that time, for example. But Apple’s iPhone was apparently the worst, passively eating up 80 MB of data over 120 hours on standby. China Mobile charges RMB 15 for 110 MB of bandwidth, so over the course a month that means that iPhones could be costing their users as much as RMB 60 (about US$10) in bandwidth fees.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: CCTV? Pfft.
Settings>Cellular Data>OFF.
Next!
The question is good. How much data is used. What happens when settings are off.
Somebody is likely running a new experiment as we speak.
Off means off. If cellular data is turned off it uses zero band-width. They didn’t turn cellular data off though. They just put the phone in stand-by mode. In stand-by mode the phone still updates information, like emails, iMessage, certain apps. This is by design. If the person is really worried they should turn off cellular data and use wi-fi instead of keep it in air plane mode if they really don’t want any kind of data use from any source.
nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Apple is dooooooooooooomed!!!!
MDN is spot on……………CCTV: LOL!!
I leave cellular data ON all the time and unless I’m away for an extended period of time, the amount of cellular data I use on 2 iPhones, 1 Android, 2 iPad cellulars is almost unnoticeable. I’m always near WiFi though.
The stuff these companies try to pin on Apple, really. Amateur comedy.
More likely, since it’s China, it’s all due to Chinese hackers endlessly trying to get into the iPhone, and the iPhone endlessly sending “deny” replies. 🙂
For the Sony and other phones, the hackers simply get in on the first try, steal your data, and get out. Personal data and privacy is gone, but your bandwidth was spared! 😉
Some Apple employee failed to pay the higher bribe rate to CCTV!
You mean the PLA generals who control CCTV.
What is standby? Data used by the phone to collect relevant timely information for the end user, is not stollen, just cached etc. If stand by mode means “airplane” mode, then I see it as a problem. If it’s just sitting there with a blank screen, then imagine standby just means, once in a while, go and check for new email, updated weather, texts, pings “I am here”. Anything to maintain relevant contextual existence…
Is it a problem for the iPhone to be chatty? I recall in the past, it wasn’t the most chatty, but maybe that has changed, with updates to iOS.
What’s 80MB over night, vs, when you start using it? My phone is so slow, vs, snappy.
I’m guessing standby would be the phone is on, cellular data is on, but the phone is not actively being used by someone. By default, features like Background App Refresh will be consuming data… duh! How is that Apple’s fault, and how is that wasted data?
Exactly. Not wasted data, so the headline is a lie.
China: Criminal Nation.
China: Ignorant Nation.
“on standby” ≠ OFF. Do you now understand? Or is the deliberately looking for trouble? As in: ‘Let’s see what bullshit we can pull on Apple today?’ (-_O)
China loves free things. And being so obsessed with this China feels the need to absorb all apps, movies, music by stealing. More than 83% of the pirating of media has been traced to China.
China… if you stop jail breaking your damn iDevices then you will see that its not Apple but the software you rooted to iOS that is leaking — LEAKING your data on your phones. Oh and learn to turn your devices off when you do not need them. LOL
Me thinks that with so many clones of iPhone
from my country that true iPhone was never tested.