14 DAY TRIAL // A strange bug has been recently discovered and widely reported by Windows Phone 7 users with various data plans. Regardless of the smartphone model, it seems that WP7 phones are not always capable of recognizing when they're in Wi-Fi range and will start using the cellular network to send or receive data.
Furthermore, as the number of applications downloaded and installed from the marketplace increases, so does the size of the data sent over the cellular network.
Apparently, a large number of Windows Phone 7 applications require Internet connectivity and they seem to prefer the 3G data connection over the Wi-Fi.
Even though the problem seems to be common to most Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoft hasn't addressed the issue publicly, either by confirming it or by offering a fix.
It is unclear what applications or part of the operating system are causing this issue which is costing people a lot of money, but the bug has become common for quite some time now, as most of the WP7 users are already aware of it.
Here is what user Julie G. wrote on winsupersite about the said bug:
“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,” concluded Julie.
However, Windows Phone 7 smartphone owners became aware of the problem at least one month before when user chrisgroves wrote on Windows Phone Secrets blog:
“I have noticed that even when on wifi, some of my apps seem to use the 3G data plan regardless. For example, I was streaming iheartradio one day, the next day I saw that my data usage had jumped from around 60mb to 145mb. Now I am completely positive I was on wifi because I am always on it when at home, but it still did not register it through the app apparently.”
Fortunately, Microsoft is expected to deploy the first major update for its latest Windows Phone 7 mobile platform in a few weeks. Let's hope this bug will be fixed as well.