Now your iPhone picks your pocket

Got an iPhone? Running iOS 6.0? Your phone, which so often co-locates with your wallet, may be extending its long fingers to relieve your purse of a few more pennies than it should be. That's because a glitch has come to light which is no doubt the joy of service providers and the bane of iPhone owners, because it apparently consumes data constantly over cellular even when you think you're on WiFi.

That much has emerged in the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports that those with iPhones are 'potentially being overcharged by hundreds - possibly thousands - of dollars' thanks to buggy software sucking down on data.

The SMH points to user forums where a range of strident complaints are to be found, including this one: 'The first two days after I received my iPhone 5, I racked up 400MB of Cellular Data.  99% of the time I was using my phone, I was connected over WiFi.  So I ran a test on my own by watching a YouTube video over WiFi and then looking at my Cellular Data under the Usage menu.  Sure enough, it had went up by around 10MB.  I called into Apple Support and asked them what was going on.  They thought that it might have been a problem with my phone or my house's WiFi connection.  After them walking me through a series of test and restores, the lady semi-acknowledged that it could be a problem with how their phone interacts with the new LTE network.'

Semi-acknowledged is a better response than that which is generally expected from Apple's famously ivory-tower approach to dealing with product shortcomings. Indeed, the SMH says Apple's official position on the potential bug is to keep schtum.

Apparently the crux of the bug is related to our complainants observations: you think you're connected to WiFi, but in reality, you're accessing your data over the cellular connection. Bye-bye cap, fast, in other words.

However, while some consumers are still experiencing the problem, iOS 6.0  is far from the most recent version (presently 6.1.3). The bottom line: keep your devices up to date or pay the price.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Tasman, we'd like to know if your iPhone 5 has resulted in using your cap faster than expected. Tell us your experiences below.