Turned Off iPhone Gets $4800 Bill from AT&T 951
Tech.Luver writes "Jay Levy says he has been stung by Apple's iPhone pact with AT&T after he took an iPhone on a Mediterranean cruise.
They didn't use their phones, but when they got back they had a 54-page monthly bill of nearly $4,800 from AT&T Wireless.
The problem was that their three iPhones were racking up a bill for data charges using foreign phone charges. The iPhone regularly updates e-mail, even while it's off, so that all the messages will be available when the user turns it on. ""
Try turning it off instead of sleeping the display (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:5, Informative)
It has an airplaine wireless off mode. The problem is that the users who buy these things are too hip and smart and cool to spend 45 seconds with the manual. User error, nothing to see here.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:5, Informative)
It also has a power-off, where it essentially turns off everything except the sensor to turn it back on again. Not too many people even know this exists, even if they own an iPhone. If you press and hold the lock button at the top right, a screen will appear that says 'slide to turn off'... this is the only way to reboot the iPhone, I think.
Most people press the 'sleep' hold button once, thinking that 'turns it off', but all it does is disable the screen. its still running, and using its antennae.
Thats called standby or sleep, not off. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe they should have done that- instead of wondering why their "off" phones were still "turning on" to ring.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Off means off (Score:3, Informative)
(I had friends at uni who got interference from cars 200m away. They ran their experiment at 3am instead. My point being, there is always interference. You shouldn't try to legislate against it.)
J.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
To turn it off all you have to do is hold down the standby button for a few seconds then then hit the off button when it asks you if you really want to turn the phone off.
Re:Roaming Charges? (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4851730.stm [bbc.co.uk]
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activitie
Though I can't see it helping much if you're using a US cell phone in the EU.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:So (Score:2, Informative)
User Error (Score:2, Informative)
Also..
1) User is an idiot and doesn't know the difference between 'off' and 'standby.'
2) There is an 'update email manually' setting, which actually I *thought* was the default behavior, though I could be wrong on that count.
I have played with an iPhone in a store (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Informative)
No, a mobile phone being operated in an aircraft causes problems with the mobile phone network. From that distance you have a massive radio footprint, and your phone appears in many many cells all at once (normally you're not in more than half-a-dozen cells, all adjacent), and roaming at a couple of hundred miles per hour when you're close enough to the ground to only hit the "normal" number of cells. The computers controlling the network routing cack themselves, and the network locks up. A couple of weeks later you get a snotty letter from Orange telling you not to do it again. See if you can guess how I know.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Say you have an ECG machine. It's hooked up via sticky contact pads to your chest and is measuring the delicate flickerings of life in your body. It's doing this because it's trying to spot the *tiny* irregularities that could indicate Bad Things.
You can't magically design a machine that's picking up miniscule electrical currents like this and have it unaffected when some idiot brings in a portable radio transceiver and cranks it up nearby while they tell their wife what they want for dinner.
As I type, I'm within 30 feet of a ward full of such machines, and maybe a couple of hundred yards from the EEG devices that measure the brain's electrical activity. As we're testing today, I can wave my phone around and I can watch the interference it causes on the data being captured. Even when I'm not talking on the phone, it's checking in with the nearest base station periodically, and I can see that screwing the traces too. It's not causing those machines to break: but it's fvcking up the data that they're capturing - and that data is being captured as it's for diagnostic purposes. Screwing this up could have really bad consequences for someone.
This is not rocket science.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a cardiologist - we get this question a lot, and I've been in many, um, discussions, about this issue.
In general, hospital equipment does not malfunction with any FCC approved wireless interference, especially from a consumer device. The trouble is, there are some anecdotes:
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0196064405007110 [elsevier.com]
that demonstrate equipment malfunction with close proximity of cellphones / radios, etc. This 2005 report was widely publicized, (sorry, system demands that you purchase the article if you want to read it) but it was a cellphone left on top an IV infusion pump that apparently malfunctioned, and was reproducible (move the phone near the pump -> malfunction, move it away and returns to normal.)
I tell people that as long as they have a digital phone, they are ok to use it in the hospital. In truth, I think that if a nurse tells you to move to another area they are probably wanting you to stop yapping in common areas, which is a much bigger problem IMHO.
As with anything that deals with life or death, physicians and health care staff are quite risk averse. If there is a very, very small chance of interference, then we err on the side of caution. Your cellphone is designed to not interfere with things, but I'm sure we have all heard our computer speakers chatter *before* a call comes in, or seen your old CRT monitor jump due to an incoming call on a nearby phone. This is interference -- making all medical equipment so that they are totally oblivious to all outside fields would make them inconceivably heavy. Don't bother with the "faraday cage" argument -- most cases are metal, but as anybody with engineering experience would tell you it is imperfect (as I've stated before, you can use your cellphone in a metal plane, also a "faraday cage.")
So, no, hospital equipment is generally ok, but generally we tell people to not use cellphones in the intensive care unit or operating rooms, where things are most sensitive and potentially could have lethal consequences. We allow answering the phone and moving to an appropriate area, and allow cellphone use throughout the hospital otherwise (the doctors do this too). If it were a big risk, equipment would be malfunctioning left and right. However, it is prudent to minimize risks, especially for nonessential communication, hence the policies.
Re:Soo.. (Score:3, Informative)
Now all this talk about is it really "off," what the Apple iPhone user manual [apple.com] (which they obviously didn't read) calls "sleep" is nothing more than a screen lock. For this story to be true we would have to see a number of things. 1)As previously noted 235MB of email was downloaded. 2)The user was truly unaware of the difference between screen lock and off. 3)The user had all notifications turned off (audio or vibrate) for each of the 235MB worth of emails
At a minimum the story is disingenuous. The iPhone does not perform as described with off. The user would have found himself in a similar predicament with any other PDA he didn't turn off (AT&T offers the same international data plan for all phones)
Re:Normally, it doesn't. (Score:3, Informative)
Normally it doesn't. Most critical equipement is designed to be solid.
I work in the medical devices field and have done so most of the time since 1990. Systems are tested rigorously for both RF Emissions and RF Susceptibility.
On the other hand, that doesn't prevent the iPhone from having a mode where it is actually off.
Of course it doesn't. There's "airplane mode" where all the RF sections of the iPhone are off, and there's also "off" which is of course different than the "I'm not using it right now and the screen is dark" mode. The only way their phones could have been fetching email while they were on vacation is this:
1. They configured the mail client for automatic updates (I think manual is the default)
2. They took 3 iPhones with them on vacation so they wouldn't use them (plausible?)
3. They put the iPhones into screen lock mode, rather than off or airplane mode.
It seems to me that being surprised that the device would do what you have configured it to do when you leave it turned on, is on par with being annoyed that your cellphone rings when you've already hung it up. If I could embed an image at this point, I'd pick one of the "You're doing it wrong" series.
Re:Off means off (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is not that electronic circuits need shielding. The problem is sensors, to use an analogy putting on earmuffs will not allow you to hear a whisper in a rock concert.
A reading from TFM... (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect Mr. Levy never bothered to RTFM on his device, and then left his phone(s) in the "sleep" mode (display off, radios on), for the duration of his cruise. From Page 14 of the iPhone User Guide [apple.com]:
Note that they call it a "Sleep/Wake button", not an "on/off" button, or a "power" button.
Other than that, he could have enabled "Airplane Mode", which does the following (User Guide, page 22):
Oh, and you can also disable automatic checking of email in the iPhone settings. The default behavior is to check every so often, but you can set it to "Manual", which means you have to tell the iPhone to check email, it won't go out automatically and try downloading messages.
There's warnings about "Additional fees may apply" plastered all over the iPhone manual when discussing international roaming, as well. So to all the people crying that this just shows the iPhone is an overhyped piece of crap, or that this is evidence of some sort of collusion between Apple and AT&T to suck their customers dry, get over it. The guy didn't read his manual, and now he's learning that that was a costly mistake. If you go to Ireland with your brand new Nokia E70 or Treo 650, and leave it on, charging, and set to automatically check email periodically, you're going to have the same fucking problem.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sleep/Wake Doesn't mean "Off" (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1659417,00.html [time.com]
The relatively informal test found 43% of the medical equipment was affected to some degree by mobile phone signals...
Re:The law needs to clarify things like this (Score:3, Informative)
To make it clearer, re-cast your argument in terms of someone being charged nearly $5000 because the "enter" key on their new computer's keyboard was specially interpreted by the pre-installed operating system as a signal to accept a customer service fee for requesting email-based help on the current application. There's simply no way that would fly in court, no matter what the manual said.
Re:Off means off (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Off means off (Score:3, Informative)
Let me call bull on this one (Score:4, Informative)
FUD, FUD, FUD (Score:4, Informative)
1) My iPhone in standby mode does not DL my email until I hit the email button at which point it connects and begins the transfer of the email. This is a setting in the email settngs preferences. By default it is set to manual. This is where I left mine.
2) My iPhone, when it is actually turned off, as opposed to in standby mode (i.e. hold the top button down for 3 seconds rather than just pressing it) it doesn't even receive calls, much less email or anything else.
3) Does anyone on slashdot even own an iPhone? Most of the comments are completely clueless as to the actual operation of the device.
Re:ihpones (Score:5, Informative)
Terms in a contract aren't always upheld ... (Score:3, Informative)
Terms in a contract are not always upheld. If they are too one sided, or absurd, a judge may rule something unconscionable. This is especially true for adhesion contracts, "take it or leave it", and even more so when there is a power imbalance between the parties such as large corp v a consumer.
Re:So (Score:3, Informative)
Except that, evidently, he didn't turn it off. He just figured that "black screen" meant "off". Also, I kind of wonder about this on the grounds that the iPhone doesn't carry a very large charge. Assuming he left it in standby, didn't do anything, and it checked for e-mail, it would carry the charge for about 2 days. Now, the most the iPhone will check e-mail is every 15 minutes, which means 96 times a day, which means 192 times in 2 days. Assuming he started with a completely full charge, the most the phones would have connected is about 200 times each.
So are 600 quick data connections to download e-mail $4800? An average of $24 per connection? 12 connections per page? Seems like a lot. I wonder if these people possibly might have been charging their cell-phones over the course of the trip and had them on for longer. If they really thought that their phones were off, why would they be charging them?
Re:AT&T Growing Pains (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:4, Informative)
Admittidly in this case it is easy to see the people were just ignorant of the phone's basic operation and, perhaps, international data should be opt-in. but to say this is due to bad UI design from apple is INSANE. If the iPhone sat in your pocket in sleep mode and DIDNT have a function to auto get emails, that would be bad design.
I just checked; auto fetching of email is OFF OFF OFF by default. These people are just the unlucky people who will remind the rest of you "non savvies" to think for a second. AND, if they used voice only for a week, you think they didnt see new email messages magically show up on their home screen of the unit? Yeah, RIGHT.
Typed from an iPhone.
Re:Off means off (Score:3, Informative)
As mentioned, this is a problem that users didn't read the manual. "I'm going to travel overseas, so I think I'll just put my phone in 'sleep' mode because I didn't read the manual to find out that it isn't 'off'." Not to mention the fact that you can put it in "airplane" mode that turns off the radios, and still use it as a camera and iPod.
Re:AT&T Growing Pains (Score:3, Informative)
1. Sleep/Wake vs. Power Off for iPhone
I can only imagine the bad press that would be in the air if this was a Microsoft phone instead of an Apple phone. But, since it's an Apple product, it's the user's fault for not knowing that turning their phones off isn't really turning their phones off.
As far as this bit...
I've taken my Blackberry (From the good ole US of A) into Mexico and the BVI's, left it on and running, and had no extra charges for data. So...like...go Verizon.
Re:It is obvious - it works like every other phone (Score:3, Informative)
My samsung A is the same and it takes 2-3 seconds of holding the end button to turn off.
Re:ihpones (Score:1, Informative)
The default is in fact to check for mail manually - these people set it to automatically check mail. Of course the real problem here is the insane roaming charges for mobile data, which is no more costly than voice for the operators.
I think they should have done the following though :
1. The phone should not check email periodically on foreign networks without explicit permission (i.e. needs a checkbox 'even on foreign Networks' for the automatic setting).
2. The phone should warn users when accessing the mobile network in other countries, ideally showing the call cost before they use it.
3. The phone should go to a deeper sleep with all radio off when unused for more than 1 hour - saves battery.
4. Have an option not to check email while the screen is asleep.
Re:There is no "Off" ? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It is obvious - it works like every other phone (Score:4, Informative)
These people were idiots, but hopefully AT&T makes things right-- that overcharge is just absurd.
The *only* difference is that the iPhone has no visible indicator of being on when the screen is black.
However, these people didn't even try to turn their phones off. They simply set them down and assumed that a darkened screen meant it was off.
not so easily filtered (Score:3, Informative)
It is not as easily filtered as you might think. Semiconductors have a tendency to rectify very high frequency signals, converting them into low frequency signals. Even discrete components can have problems, because you only need a tiny stray capacitance to get significant coupling at those frequencies. (Look at some numbers - a low stray capacitance is in the pF range, so what is 1/(2pi f C) for f of a few GHz?) It is easy to be stung by resonances unless you have a careful cascade of filters optimized for different frequency ranges.
Re:iPhone off with touchscreen? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This had better get fixed (Score:3, Informative)
I mean, call me crazy, but that's what I do with my phone while I'm out of the country, I just refrain from making calls on it unless they're important. Then again, I guess I'm "the dumbass" for expecting slashdot readers to have crawled out of their mother's basement and actually gotten out of the country themselves.
Re:Roaming Charges? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's the button name ... (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm, that sounds a lot like what the iPhone does...it goes in to a low power state but leaves its input partially active (two buttons) and keeps its network interface (GSM/EDGE) up in order to respond as it becomes needed.