There’s some disturbing news on the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 front, as it appears that the platform will increasingly send more data over 3G even if WiFi is available. This could potentially lead to users sending out more data then they’re aware of and this could lead to costly data overages.
Over at the Windows Super site, a reader writes:
On December 22nd I received an email from AT&T saying that I was close to my 2GB data limit which truly shocked me as I feel I do not use data that much. I went and looked at my AT&T account online and noticed that my phone was sending huge chunks of data seemingly in patterns. For instance on November 21-24 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 10:41pm each day and Dec 1-4 it sent between 30 and 50 MB of data at 9:41am each day. On December 23rd I turned on airplane mode so my phone could no longer send data. I turned airplane mode off briefly on December 23rd and the phone sent 400 MB of data. I called AT&T yesterday, December 28th, but they said that there was nothing that they can do to figure out what was happening on my phone.
Paul Thurrot, who wrote a book on Windows Phone 7, concurred with this and said it appears that devices like the Samsung Focus send this data over 3G even when the WiFi is available and turned on. Microsoft has yet to publicly acknowledge this or address the issue.
So, are any of you seeing this issue? If you are, I’d be pretty pissed if this led to me going over my plan with AT&T or T-Mobile. We’re sitting down with Microsoft in a few days and will ask them directly.
In the meanwhile, this Windows Phone 7 bug should likely be fixed with the upcoming software update and this could released within days.
[Via WinSupersite]