Bil Simser of the Fear and Loathing blog has examined the spurious Windows Phone 3G data usage issue that was first discussed here and on the SuperSite for Windows and may just have an answer. This is a must-read if you’re experiencing this issue or worried about it.
Recently there’s been rumours floating around regarding “phantom” Windows Phone 7 data being magically sent and received on the latest WP7 phones. The news has mostly been floating around twitter so I didn’t pay it much attention. The BBC Technology News picked it up so I thought I would look more into it myself seeing that we have WP7 phones and maybe there was some truth to all this (and more importantly what was the cause).
After reviewing the logs I made a theory that the only thing that could possibly be sending data is the Feedback feature. With no other apps running under lock, what else could it be?
In Windows 7 under your Settings the last option is Feedback. This sends feedback to Microsoft to “help improve Windows Phone”. On this page you have three options:
- Send feedback and use my cellular data connection
- Send feedback and (presumably) use my WiFi connection
- Don’t send feedback
So I turned it off. Set Feedback to disabled and wait.
I waited. And waited. And generally didn’t use the phone if I could.
The next day I went back to look at the data usage logs from the time period after turning the feedback mechanism off.
Quite a *drastic* change from what Feedback was turned on. I mean for a 24 hour period (sans 3 phone calls) I consumed about 1MB. Still quite a bit of transfer going on but at least it amounts to 30MB per month, not 30MB per day!
Like I said this observation is neither scientific or conclusive. You decide what to do but frankly until Microsoft makes this data transfer exempt from your data plan (like that will happen) I would just turn Feedback off. YMMV.
As he notes, it’s not a lot of information to go on, but this seems credible. Certainly something for you to try.
When I first got my Focus I figured I’d be nice to Microsoft and turn that on. My data usage was way higher than I thought it would be (well over 1gb in the fist month). It’s been turned off for a while and this month I probably won’t even break 500mB. Anecdotal, of course, but my experience seems to agree with what he found. I kinda figured it might be the CEIP when these stories first started floating but figured other people tried that and/or already had it turned off. Seems obvious.
I hope this is the case for those who have been affected by this issue.
I have feedback turned on, and haven’t had any excessive data usage at all (about 100MB used a month for all my web/email needs, as I’m on WiFi most of the time). There is an option to “Use my mobile data connection to send feedback” which isn’t turned on. Something else to consider perhaps?
Thanks for the link. Others have pointed out it’s not happening to them so it varies. In any case, I noticed a change. Maybe someone else will and report back with the same findings.
While I hope it works for everyone, I note that, while my Bandwidth usage has dropped significantly this month, my feedback was set to “On” and the 3G connection was enabled. So, at least for me, this setting doesn’t seem like it would fix the issue.
That being said, I did turn off the “use cellular data connection” option for feedback just in case.
Does anyone else have reduced bandwidth AND the cellular connection was set to “on” ?
My Mozart is set to send feedback and to use my mobile connection to send the feedback. My data usage is very low. In the last 28 days I have used less than 80MB. Some days show no usage at all.
Note: This is my first smartphone; I don’t use Facebook; I don’t do much browsing; I’m from Australia. These may all mean that I don’t have much feedback to send!
If you think that this tip will reduce your data usage, please be aware that whenever you do a soft reset on your phone, the Feedback status reverts to enabled.
I must say, however, that disabling Feedback on my Samsung Focus had no effect on data usage, whatsoever.
A final comment – ferreting out whether a phantom data issue exists, and if so, what causes it, is complicated by the way that service providers log data usage. Hopefully your provider does better than my provider – AT&T. Although AT&T logs data usage at intervals over the course of the day, giving the false impression that the time the data is logged indicates the time the data was used, in fact there is a huge lag, of as much as 8 hours, between when the data is used and when it is reported on the AT&T website.
On the downside, now Microsoft wont be able to take feedback from users and improve Window Phone.
Actually, in reality, they already know what they need to fix, and the people who will help them improve Windows Phone in terms of adding features will be tech. enthusiasts who will scream in Microsoft’s ears to get something.
Lets just hope the design team will keep Windows Phone from becoming overly complex as it matures. Although I have faith in them, they are some of best and most talented designers this entire industry has ever seen.
While this tip may give some relief, there is still a lower lever problem in the way the OS handles the data stream between wifi and cellular. One simple way to test this is to use the U-verse app. AT&T specifically designed this to prevent video data from passing over cellular. If you try to download a video from the app shortly after waking the phone up from sleep, chances are it will be blocked becuase of not being connected to wifi. I’ve seen this error even when the phone is supposedly connected to wifi. Turning on airplane mode or waiting a while for the phone to actually cease 3G usage allows the video to download.
I’ve also downloaded large apps from the marketplace when on wifi, and then incurred a data usage equivalent to the size of the app that I just downloaded. This problem really is more than just a feedback issue.
I have had the Focus since day one. On both of my last two billing cycles I used around 200MB and have had feedback turned on with use of my cellular connection the entire time.
Thought this was already known. Has been discussed by me and others in the past on some forums.
My theory about the excessive data transmissions is that those could be crash dumps that Microsoft collects of crashing apps and Windows Phone built-in stuff. Windows Phone team member Abolade Gbadeges said in a Channel9 video that Microsoft collects such dumps.
Those dumps should of course only be sent over WiFi or when connected to Zune. If that’s not the case, then that’s the real bug.
I think this should be easy to check: turn on Airplane Mode (i.e. GSM antenna off) and turn on WiFi. This will ensure WiFi is the only available connection. Now start some proxy software, like Fiddler2, on a PC and configure that proxy on your Windows Phone’s WiFi connection. Then leave the phone for at least 24 hours (the hard part). Might try this myself if I have the time.
Tonight I actually did some logging using Fiddler. I activated Airplane Mode (3G off) and enabled WiFi, which effectively makes the WiFi connection the only one available. Then I put my phone in standby, without connecting it to the charger. Here’s what I found out:
* Even though WiFi is turned off when the phone is in standby, it does get activated in regular intervals. This happens when the phone is polling some of my e-mail accounts for new mail. Surprisingly (at least to me) this only happens for e-mail accounts that are configured to be checked at an interval. I have also configured some accounts to use Push Mail, but those didn’t seem to cause WiFi to reconnect at those intervals.
* At 02:38 (GMT+1) the phone contacted the server “services.windowsphone.net” using an SLL (HTTPS) connection. However, since I didn’t have installed the fake FiddlerRoot certificate on my phone, I wasn’t able to look into the contents of this encrypted session. I’m a bit reluctant to install this certificate, because the phone currently has no way of removing it afterwards. Unfortunately at the moment I have no additional data. Since I only logged the HTTPS CONNECT’s I also don’t know the size of the data that was sent to that Microsoft server.
And something else I forgot to mention above. While connecting to that “services.windowsphone.net” server the HTTP connection sent the following User-Agent header:
MobileKeeper/BASIC/0×0809/ms_wm7/7004.WM7_7.0_Ship(mojobld).20100916-1429 SmartPhone/PC40100/HTC/HTC/7.0.7004.3
That’s not the normal User-Agent that the phone uses. Wasn’t “MobileKeeper” some company that Microsoft acquired some years ago?
It quite clearly has a check-box to send by the data connection (if unchecked then by wi-fi I presume). This is disabled by defualt (on my Omnia 7 anyway)
I have check for updates over cellular and send feedback off over cellular and I’m still getting the random 10MB per day when all I do is 4-10 emails received, none were sent out, weather.com live tile, no emails sent received through hotmail and no other services used. No cellular gaming, no Facebook, no maps and no photo uploading.
So far the change of turning those two services off has made no difference in the amount of data. The next is turning yahoo email auto sync off and set it to manual and only do it on wifi. I had seen one post where a user noticed in his router that gmail using doing 10′s of KBs per sync attempt and yahoo was doing 1-1.5MB per sync.
I did notice that feedback turns back on on phone reboots, reboots being the only way I know how to get Marketplace working after it crashes. I also noticed that even though it turns on, the use cellular data is turned off.
Hey throw me a bone Paul, I was the first to bring this up at least on your site ;). Anyway I have Send Feedback and use my WiFi connection on because I WANT Microsoft to fix any bugs I see and also record how I use the phone so they can improve the UI to make my life easier. With cellular turned off for Send Feedback I used 105 MB last night. I definitely think this is the issue, with MS sending memory dumps from crashes (specifically Marketplace which crashes a lot and you have to reboot the phone to get it to work again).
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Someone with this issue should definately run the fiddler thing that was mentioned above to look at the traffic and see if there are any suprises!
How is this one. when my device goes into lock down mode it no longer uses my wifi at home. instead it uses the T-MO 3G so when I wake it up and notice that wifi is not connected I thought strange. so I plugged my device in on the wall charger and let it pass out again. I gave it a good 30 min before I woke it up guess what it was still connected to my wifi. so I went and took it off the charger and did it again woke it up wifi was off. so when at home and I hit the bed or stop using the device I put it on the charger so that it stays on the wifi. and I keep feedback off. always.
Yes, WiFi will be turned off if you’re in standby and not on a charger. But there are reports of people that claim their mail/calendar is still synched, even when in Airplane Mode with WiFi on. This suggests WiFi is reconnected at certain intervals when in standby and no 3G is available. Could be related to mail sync interval.
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Microsoft should listen to consumers more than data feedback. That’s part of the problem.
That was a really good point to mention! That may be a source BUT I have a second guess too!
Maybe that large amount of data being used is because of SkyDrive AUTO-Uploading feature of the pictures taken by your camera, which is on by default!
Maybe those people reporting this issue take lots of pictures and are not paying any attention to this feature!
cuz I personally, after almost 3 month, can NOT see anything even like what some people are sayin! My data usage is really normal and I’ve everything enabled, doing email, web browsing, xbox live games,… pretty much everything! :D Even my Feedback was on (even with permission of using cellular network) and nothing! nothing special! :D
Yes, that SkyDrive upload may also be a reason. Although the photos (unfortunately) aren’t uploaded at full resolution/file size.
Paul,
Thank you for all of the info you provide on your blogs. I watch them regularly. I just discovered something very bad. I was watching your windows weekly podcast using twit last night. I had made sure I was on wifi before I started it and I watched it. I received a message from AT&T early this morning saying I went over my data. I had consumed more than 250MB last night. Somehow during the podcast it switched to Cellular and off WI-FI. Thant is not good. Not sure if anyone else is seeing this.
So. :) This has been all over this blog, yes. Microsoft is investigating this issue.
I have the same problem. I have Samsung Omnia 7 in UK Three network.
Recently I have noticed that my phone has eaten over 500MB of mobile data over past 10days. I am only using my phone to make calls and check my Yahoo mail.
Also noticed that its connecting to 3G+ while at the same time coneected to Wi-fi.
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