App running in background??

mel123

Hi folks, my mother has an iphone and just got her bill. Every night at midnight something runs and downloads a lot of data, causing her bill to be really high. Any ideas how you can find out wha it is that is doing this and turn it off?

KittyeeTrix

My son showed me how, you press twice quickly on the circular dipped home button at the bottom Center of the phone.
You will see all open apps in a line at the bottom of the screen. Press one of them until you see a minus sign appear on them. Then close the apps individually by tapping on the minus sign. Press the home button once to exit

vinnycoyne

mel123 wrote: »

Hi folks, my mother has an iphone and just got her bill. Every night at midnight something runs and downloads a lot of data, causing her bill to be really high. Any ideas how you can find out wha it is that is doing this and turn it off?

It's probably not an app. Most network providers add up your data usage for the day at midnight.

CathalDublin

Agree with Vinnie above
You also might try turning notifications off for a few days and monitoring your data each day.
Some of the radio apps use a lot of data

Aishae

Turning off push notifications is a good idea too. It's in the settings. I found it was part of the problem for me

120_Minutes

mel123 wrote: »

Hi folks, my mother has an iphone and just got her bill. Every night at midnight something runs and downloads a lot of data, causing her bill to be really high. Any ideas how you can find out wha it is that is doing this and turn it off?

if your mother has an iphone and data usage causes a high bill, why has she not got a data package?

Deep Thought

120_Minutes wrote: »

if your mother has an iphone and data usage causes a high bill, why has she not got a data package?

Maybe she doesnt know what the phone is doing

murpho999

mel123 wrote: »

Hi folks, my mother has an iphone and just got her bill. Every night at midnight something runs and downloads a lot of data, causing her bill to be really high. Any ideas how you can find out wha it is that is doing this and turn it off?

How do you know it's happening at midnight and doing that?

If you can see that, why can't you see the running app.

What data is it downloading and where to?

Sounds very strange to me and can't understand how an app does this.

Never had an app cause me problems in the background.

coylemj

fluffyorganic1 wrote: »

My son showed me how, you press twice quickly on the circular dipped home button at the bottom Center of the phone.
You will see all open apps in a line at the bottom of the screen.

I don't think the list is necessarily of apps. that are still open and running in the background, I think it's a list of the recent apps that you ran, regardless of whether they're still open or not.

I agree that that's how you close any that are open, I just don't think that appearing in that list means that they are actually still open.

I could be wrong but when I see icons for 'settings' and weather apps I don't think the list is exclusively of apps that are still open, I think it's a list of recently used apps.

Edit: iOS4 user guide ...

View the most recently used apps (iPod touch 3rd generation or later): Double-click the Home button. The four most recently used app are shown at the bottom of the screen. Flick left to see more apps.

Note, no mention of 'open apps', just 'recently used'.

CathalDublin

coylemj wrote: »

I don't think the list is necessarily of apps. that are still open and running in the background, I think it's a list of the recent apps that you ran, regardless of whether they're still open or not.

I agree that that's how you close any that are open, I just don't think that appearing in that list means that they are actually still open.

I could be wrong but when I see icons for 'settings' and weather apps I don't think the list is exclusively of apps that are still open, I think it's a list of recently used apps.

Edit: iOS4 user guide ...

View the most recently used apps (iPod touch 3rd generation or later): Double-click the Home button. The four most recently used app are shown at the bottom of the screen. Flick left to see more apps.

Note, no mention of 'open apps', just 'recently used'.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/multitasking.html

vinnycoyne

It's not technically possible for an App Store app to run 24/7. The system will kill a running process after a certain amount of time, depending on available resources. AFAIR, it's around 10 minutes.

There are exceptions - turn-by-turn GPS apps, and radio/music streaming are the most common.

coylemj

CathalDublin wrote: »

http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/multitasking.html

Is that an RTFM or are you disagreeing with the quote from the user guide I pasted above?

guil

vinnie is right above, with o2 you get billed for 48kb then 48mb and then anything over that is displayed as one more volume

i could be wrong about the 48kb but the 48mb is definitely right

CathalDublin

coylemj wrote: »

Is that an RTFM or are you disagreeing with the quote from the user guide I pasted above?

Wasn't being smart, was just linking to apples si ite and multitasking.
Disagree that double tapping is just showing the last opened app, they are the last opened apps in order but also running in the background

coylemj

CathalDublin wrote: »

Disagree that double tapping is just showing the last opened app, they are the last opened apps in order but also running in the background

Disagree with your use of the word 'also' above, the apps listed are not necessarily still running in the background but killing them from that view is the way to close them if they are still running.

That was the point I made in my earlier post, neither the Apple web page you pointed me to (Just double-click the Home button to reveal your recently used apps.) or the iOS4 User Guide section I quoted above say that being listed in that line of apps implies that the app is still running in the background.

Or put another way, the list of apps is not exclusively those that are still running in the background, it is a list of all recently used apps.

120_Minutes

coylemj wrote: »

Disagree with your use of the word 'also' above, the apps listed are not necessarily still running in the background but killing them from that view is the way to close them if they are still running.

That was the point I made in my earlier post, neither the Apple web page you pointed me to (Just double-click the Home button to reveal your recently used apps.) or the iOS4 User Guide section I quoted above say that being listed in that line of apps implies that the app is still running in the background.

Or put another way, the list of apps is not exclusively those that are still running in the background, it is a list of all recently used apps.

Hmmm not so sure. Here's a test, for the next while, don't kill off any apps at all. At some point your phone will not launch any further apps, as it's ram has been used up. Wouldn't that only happen if some, or most were still running, albeit suspended?

vinnycoyne

120_Minutes wrote: »

coylemj wrote: »

Disagree with your use of the word 'also' above, the apps listed are not necessarily still running in the background but killing them from that view is the way to close them if they are still running.

That was the point I made in my earlier post, neither the Apple web page you pointed me to (Just double-click the Home button to reveal your recently used apps.) or the iOS4 User Guide section I quoted above say that being listed in that line of apps implies that the app is still running in the background.

Or put another way, the list of apps is not exclusively those that are still running in the background, it is a list of all recently used apps.

Hmmm not so sure. Here's a test, for the next while, don't kill off any apps at all. At some point your phone will not launch any further apps, as it's ram has been used up. Wouldn't that only happen if some, or most were still running, albeit suspended?

That's not how multitasking works. The system kills older/frozen processes automatically to ensure that there's always enough RAM free to launch the next app.

coylemj

120_Minutes wrote: »

Hmmm not so sure. Here's a test, for the next while, don't kill off any apps at all. At some point your phone will not launch any further apps, as it's ram has been used up. Wouldn't that only happen if some, or most were still running, albeit suspended?

I wasn't addressing the issue of whether apps are or are not running in the background, some obviously are because when you tap the icon the app starts straight away without the normal banner so you know it was sitting there in the background, this applies to most news apps such as breakingnews.ie and TheJournal.ie

My point is that when you double-click the home button, the apps that you see are the recently used apps, some of which might be running in the background but others might not.

Simply appearing on that list does not indicate that the app is currently running in the background, only that you ran it recently.

120_Minutes

coylemj wrote: »

Simply appearing on that list does not indicate that the app is currently running in the background, only that you ran it recently.

Huh? That can't be right, if it's running in the background it has to appear in that list.....if it wasn't how would you shut it down? Can you give me an example?

coylemj

120_Minutes wrote: »

Huh? That can't be right, if it's running in the background it has to appear in that list.....if it wasn't how would you shut it down? Can you give me an example?

The apps that appear in the list are not exclusively the ones that are running in the background, all of the recently run apps are listed, regardless of whether they are still running or not.

Nowhere does it say that double-clicking the home button brings up a list of apps that are running in the background, what Apple says is that it brings up a list of recently run apps.

120_Minutes

I'm not talking about exclusivity, my point is that if an app is running in the background it must appear in this list. Your previous posts claim otherwise.

Sad Professor

120_Minutes wrote: »

I'm not talking about exclusivity, my point is that if an app is running in the background it must appear in this list. Your previous posts claim otherwise.

I think you misunderstood. Coylemj never said that. The list is of recently used apps, not apps running in the background. If an app is running in the background it will obviously be in the list because you would have used it recently.

healysa

O2 have gurus instore you can call in with the phone and I'm sure they can sort it out

guil

healysa wrote: »

O2 have gurus instore you can call in with the phone and I'm sure they can sort it out

there's nothing to sort out though, its just the way o2 billing works