New to EE today, put the SIM card in my iPhone 5 at about 6pm tonight and over the last 5 hours it says I have used 82MB! I have barely used the phone, and have had it connected to WiFi most of the night.

I tested it out and reset my iPhone data counter, opened twitter once, opened Facebook once and opened up one web page (Digital spy homepage) and it has used 1MB of data in the space of 1 min with minimal use! So I will quickly use up my 1GB allowance at this rate. Averaged down my allowance per day is 33MB, so I have used almost 3 days worth of data in 5 hours with a very small amount of usage. Was on Vodafone before and I have used my phone less tonight than a usual night, on Vodafone I used about 700MB a month maximum.

Very worried!

The wifi may go to sleep when the screen is off. 1MB for Twitter, facebook and a web page is right, if not more, you should also look to see what's using the data and how many accounts you are syncing etc.

1GB is not that much data to be honest, not with 4G speeds.

1 twitter account, and 4G doesn't mean it should use more data, also I have tested it on 3G as well as LTE and the data use still seems high. Like I say I have barely used it this evening, but I guess the biggest test will be see how much I use in a week.

I don't plan on using it any more than my Vodafone account so 1GB should be enough, however I signed up fully aware I may have to upgrade to 3GB a month if I start to use more data, but if I've somehow used 82MB without even touching it then even 3GB a month won't be enough.

Well if you want to take advantage of 4G you probably want to stream video or download files faster right? 1GB won't let you do much of that, that's what I meant.

Vodafone scales down images which uses less bandwidth, not sure about EE. On the downside images look grainy and pages don't look as good.

Not really bothered about streaming, was just fed up of Vodafone and for a few quid extra a month could get 4G so opted for EE.

I've never heard about Vodafone scaling stuff down.

I think they compress images, I know O2 and T-mobile do, maybe Vodafone don't.

What you described for 1MB was about right though. I think you are going to struggle with 1GB if you use it a lot.

Also didn't EE say a while back that 500MB will be enough for most users? I find this very hard to believe if it's this easy to use data.

The main issue is I've barely used it tonight and it says I've used 82MB in 5 hours.

The compression thing is true.

But you say its connected to wifi at home? So how is it using 3/4G, is your wifi turning off or disconnecting or something? Have you tried turning background data off or limiting the refresh period.

Tbh 1gb is not a lot but 82mb on twitter and facebook does seem a bit high.

Well it's a known thing that when the iPhone is in sleep mode, the wifi disables in some cases, so push notifications etc. will use cellular data, however no way should it be so much. It hasn't been on wifi all night, but most of the night. No way do I feel I have used 82MB worth of data.

As said I was on a 1GB plan on Vodafone and have been for years and never used anywhere near the full 1GB.

I have downloaded Onavo Count to my iPhone so will see what that counts up on usage, looks to be a decent app.

Seems like a good idea. The compression issue could be one of the causes.

Btw what was the phone you had before?

Had the iPhone 5 on Vodafone too, on sim only. Not changed any settings other than it downloading the EE carrier settings for LTE.

icloud backup?
It will do that in the background if you're on wifi, but won't do it if you only have cellular coverage so your allowance won't be affected if that's the cause.

Nothing to do with iCloud backup. As you say that only works over wifi, therefore isn't added to the mobile data usage counter.

The iPhone connects to Wifi if its available before it does any email downloads whilst sleeping. With push it gets the notification for email.. for the header then checks for wifi then downloads message. IMessage attachments for example is similar. Fetched email is always over wifi as the phone wakes (no screen tho) goes to wifi collects email at the set times. This is why it kills the battery.

Notifications however generally are done over Cellular but they hardly use any data at all. Even if you had hundreds of notifications on your phone an hour it would use very little. I know this as this happened on my wife's birthday with FB and Twitter. Couple of MB for the whole evening over cellular.

Check what's set in Settings>General>Mobile Data>
Down the bottom there are options for usage of some functions on Cellular.