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iPhone 4S's Siri Is a Bandwidth Guzzler

Posted by timothy on from the at-least-data-is-free dept.

Frankie70 writes "'Siri's dirty little secret is that she's a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.' A study by Arieso shows that users of the iPhone 4S demand three times as much data as iPhone 3G users and twice as much as iPhone 4 users, who were identified as the most demanding in a 2010 study. 'In all, Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S "appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent."'"

6 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Siri Is Not A Bandwidth Hog; 63KB/Query by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article is stupid and the Washington Post should be ashamed. ArsTechnica ran the numbers 2 months ago and came up with an average of 63KB per query, and even less for queries that were just voice commands for the phone itself (as opposed to an internet lookup).

    In total, our 11 queries added up to 693.6KB, or an average of 63KB per query. As you can see above, Siri tasks that are local to the phone appear to require less data than ones that need further lookups on the Internet, which makes sense.

    If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.

    If Siri is a bandwidth hog, $deity help us all, because that means all that voice traffic and streaming video we do on our phones and tablets must be killing cellular networks and running their bodies through the wood chipper.

  2. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    iCloud and the updated 4S camera is indeed partially to blame if indeed data usage is as high as reported, however the article is flawed if this Ars article is correct.

  3. Well, duh. by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did you even read the article in question? It's just a re-hash of a press release, written by someone who doesn't seem to understand how any of these newfangled gadgets work.

    Here, this is a quote from the article. See if you can read it without facepalming:

    A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G. The new phone requires far more data than most other advanced smartphones, which are pretty data-intensive themselves, The Post has reported.

    To continue with the author's car analogy, blaming your new phone for the fact that you download more with it is like blaming your car for a parking ticket. It's not the phone, it's the user.

    Hell, if the author had bothered reading the study he linked to, he'd know the study was about data usage vs. phones. The summary page doesn't even mention Siri.

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  4. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It does. In this case Siri, a pretty, local front-end for a remote web service.

    Your dislike of flowery marketing words doesn't make them entirely meaningless.

  5. Re:Well, duh by somersault · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, Blackberrys have been doing it for a while too.

    --
    which is totally what she said
  6. Re:Well, duh by Y-Crate · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the Ars link:

    If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.

    Yeah, Siri is not really a bandwidth hog at all. 63KB is about the same amount of data needed to get you one image on one web page. Browse something as innocuous as a few news articles? Congrats, you've used more data than Siri will during an average day.

    Sprint has come out and said that the average iPhone owner burns through 50% less bandwidth than the average 3G / 4G user on another platform.

    Sprint's CEO was cited elsewhere saying that Android apps tend to be "more chatty" with the network, and the iPhone does a better job of offloading data to WiFi whenever possible. And the App store does its part too. If you try to download a large app over the cell network, it will throw up a little alert window and ask you to try to download it over WiFi instead. (Before you complain, that's a mandate from the carriers, Apple has been trying to raise the limit)