iPhone 4S's Siri Is a Bandwidth Guzzler

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iPhone 4S's Siri Is a Bandwidth Guzzler

Posted by timothy on Friday January 27, 2012 @07:55PM 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."'"

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Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 20:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

New phone debuts with cloud capabilities. People buy new phone, use the shit out of it, and also begin utilizing cloud functions. Of course bandwidth use is going to go up.
The real scandal here is that the carriers are pushing back, trying to keep bandwidth use down so they don't have to get off their asses invest more than they absolutely have to in network capacity.
1. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 20:24 · 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.
2. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 20:47 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Which would be a complete and accurate statement if I was unreeling a fiber behind my phone everywhere I go.
  In the real world, backhaul is not always the limiting factor; in many metro areas, the RF segment is at capacity during peak hours, and the only fix is more spectrum or more cells. (Which just makes fixed caps look silly -- there's no reason but greed to charge users in overserved rural areas for using the available bandwidth, and even where bandwidth is tight, flat caps don't discriminate between harmless off-peak use and problematic peak use.)
3. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-27 21:07 · 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.
4. Re:Well, duh by Hognoxious · 2012-01-27 21:42 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  That would require an extra input field which would ruin the GUI's feng shui.
  
  --
  Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
5. Re:Well, duh by liquidsin · 2012-01-27 21:53 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I think the real problem with Apple users is how clueless they are about technology. Cell phone towers are easily overloaded so you really shouldn't use them for things like backups. Wait until you get home or go to your public library or starbucks or something.
  myopic and misplaced. that's like bitching that the problem with ford owners is that they don't understand the engineering behind road design. this is not a failing of the user; this is a failing of the cell phone providers to scale up their architecture appropriately for new technology. they absolutely had to know that every new generation of phone is bringing new ways to use data, and that they're selling them more now than ever, and that people are becoming permanently "connected" more and more by the hour. instead of spending their record-breaking profits on new laws and huge bonuses they could have been expanding their network capabilities and increasing service levels and satisfaction. but hey, screwing customers and litigating show up prettier on this quarter's reports.
  
  --
  do not read this line twice.
6. Re:Well, duh by somersault · 2012-01-27 23:57 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Actually, Blackberrys have been doing it for a while too.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
7. Re:Well, duh by Truekaiser · 2012-01-28 00:01 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  'cloud' junk is just the rebirth, or in this case the reanimation. of the dead and i thought buried dumb terminal architectural model.
  I can see why they resurrected it though, millions of people use their phones and computers now to store personal information. if you can somehow get them to willingly hand that over you have the modern golden egg laying goose. you can mine that data for ad revenue. use it as leverage to get tax breaks from the governments of the area's you physically store it, in exchange for letting them have access of course.
  it's only natural for the beast that is a corporation to try to get into the golden trough of revenue that this is. especially carriers. there is a reason they are clamping down on data usage and it has nothing to do with how much capacity they have. it has everything to do with the money they earn from you while you try to access your personal data off these cloud services.
  if you don't want to be milked, just say no to any of these stupid 'cloud' services..
8. Re:Well, duh by Maow · 2012-01-28 00:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  'cloud' junk is just the rebirth, or in this case the reanimation. of the dead and i thought buried dumb terminal architectural model.
  Except that "smart" phones (I hate that phrase even more than "cloud" stuff) are decidedly not dumb terminals. There's more computing power in each one than a lot of the servers that the dumb terminals used to connect to.
  
  if you don't want to be milked, just say no to any of these stupid 'cloud' services..
  It's not a stupid service for my phone to upload (sometimes via Wifi, regardless at zero extra cost to me) to my "cloud" storage at Ubuntu One. I doubt Ubuntu / Canonical will be marketing to me by looking at my photos (or files), but if they do, I can just ignore it like I do all the other marketing I'm exposed to...
  Really, there is a use for "cloud" services: for example, take a photo of police doing naughty things? Best to have the photo "in the cloud" before they can confiscate camera.
  Camera memory card is getting full? Upload a few photos to the "cloud", delete them from camera, keep taking photos.
9. Re:Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2012-01-28 01:56 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  As a developer I find the APIs around iCloud are what make it interesting, and more than just storage. The file coordination APIs let an app on one device say "I'm about to show the user this file", and iCloud will tell another device that's currently editing the file "hey, the user wants to see that file on another device, please save it now" and send the diffs to iCloud, which sends the diffs to the device so the user gets the current version of the document without having to manually save it. I'm not aware of any other cloud type storage system that does this.
10. Re:Well, duh by samkass · 2012-01-28 02:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The interesting thing, though, is that Siri itself is NOT a bandwidth hog. Ars and others have tested it and it actually doesn't use much bandwidth at all. But it makes the phone SO much more useful that people are sucking down three times as much information if they have Siri to help them find it.
  
  --
  E pluribus unum
11. Re:Well, duh by ceoyoyo · 2012-01-28 02:53 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "I think the real problem with Apple users is how clueless they are about technology."
  iCloud backups occur only over wifi, only if the phone is plugged in.
  Should have Googled that one first hey?
12. Re:Well, duh by Sponge+Bath · 2012-01-28 02:57 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think the real problem with Apple users is how clueless they are about technology.
  A small subset of users of any mobile phone are technologically literate, and the rest are just people who want to use their phones. I think the real problem with Apple haters is they are clueless about their own bias.
13. Re:Well, duh by spire3661 · 2012-01-28 04:37 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Interesting that you discount the usefullness of the pocket computer because of its network status. WIthout a network i can stil geolocate, write, draw, take pictures/movies, play games, listen to music etc etc. You are a luddite for thinking the pocket computer turns into a brick if you lose data connection.
  
  --
  Good-bye
14. Re:Well, duh by Y-Crate · 2012-01-28 06:24 · 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)
Siri Is Not A Bandwidth Hog; 63KB/Query by rsmith-mac · 2012-01-27 20:08 · 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.
1. Re:Siri Is Not A Bandwidth Hog; 63KB/Query by Swanktastic · 2012-01-27 20:15 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I think a pretty reasonable hypothesis would be that the early adopters are much more likely to be heavy users than the folks using 2-3-4 year old phones. IE it's not the phone (or features) it's the individual.
2. Re:Siri Is Not A Bandwidth Hog; 63KB/Query by pthisis · 2012-01-27 20:53 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  People who do no more than 10-15 searches a day aren't on the radar when it comes to worrying about bandwidth hogs. The real question is how much does each Siri search use compared to an old-style web search (I suspect the answer is "a lot more", probably more than 10 times as much) and whether for heavy users that approaches a significant percentage of overall use (I suspect the answer is "no, when you're listening to a couple of podcasts and watching a vid or two and surfing the web heavily, a few dozen Siri searches doesn't mean all that much).
  But mentioning the light users is totally disingenuous--light users aren't where bandwidth concerns are met.
  
  --
  rage, rage against the dying of the light
3. Re:Siri Is Not A Bandwidth Hog; 63KB/Query by Lord_Jeremy · 2012-01-27 22:00 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Furthermore, the 4S has a higher resolution camera than previous phones, and the launch of the iCloud service means people are probably uploading things like photos to their cloud storage accounts. +1 TFA is a troll.
rebuttals to the study and WaPo article by wickerprints · 2012-01-27 20:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

The WaPo article is nothing more than sensationalist journalism, designed to foment controversy for the sake of attention and readership.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/11/how-data-heavy-is-siri-on-an-iphone-4s-ars-investigates.ars
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/27/siri-is-not-a-bandwidth-hog-and-users-are-not-the-problem/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/27/2753694/siri-isnt-ruining-your-cellphone-service
And from my own personal experience as someone who has used an iPhone since the very first model, I have not found that Siri has noticeably increased my data usage. Other types of data access are far more intensive, such as streaming video and music, as well as sharing images/video taken with the iPhone's camera.
Exceeding monthly data caps is the new black by boundary · 2012-01-27 20:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

Welcome to the future. Just as the average web page size has bloated to over 1MB, the average data content in a single smartphone interaction will also grow in size until most peoples' montly data allowance just isn't enough. As more and more data caps are being brought to bear, data usage is going to become much more of an issue for people - at least once they realise they're paying 50 - 100% more for their 'actual' usage than they intended. I wonder how many of them will just accept the extra cost (therefore putting extra cash into the telcos pockets) rather than moderate their behaviour? This is a big deal right now in NZ, where you can pay a shedload of money per month for just 250MB of mobile data...I can only imagine it's going to get worse.
1. Re:Exceeding monthly data caps is the new black by Kjella · 2012-01-27 21:29 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Or it'll be like with Internet connections, remember pay per minute on those? Oh, I sure do. Remember caps and additional money/MB too? Oh yes. Turns out in general people don't like it. Most of us were willing to pay a good price simply to not have to worry about what next month's Internet bill would be. If I end up in the hospital a month and use zero bytes of bandwidth, I'm still going to pay the same. And that's the way I like it. I'm pretty sure that as the market matures cell phone data plans will get more sane too. Actually, checking now the ideal plan if you're a heavy data user in Norway: Netcom Fastpris Data, 249 NOK = 43 USD per month, free data usage, speed reduced to 120 kbps after 5GB. Regular subscriptions on the largest carriers are capped at 400-600 NOK or 70-100 USD so you can't go over that in a single month even if you are online 24x7.
  Just don't use your smartphone abroad. Ever. Or if you must then enable, get your shit done and disable is ASAP. Might not be such a big deal in the US but imagine you had an inter-state charge that could be several dollars per megabyte. That's what it's like in Europe now, the moment you cross the border all rules change. They're supposed to block you after 500 NOK (85 USD) but sometimes they don't and it's your problem. Every so often you get news stories about them charging people thousands of dollars for that shit, total ripoff. Know where the off button is and use it. You'll enjoy your vacation more too, plus it does wonders for your battery life. You don't get to chit-chat with your phone though...
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
2. Re:Exceeding monthly data caps is the new black by tukang · 2012-01-28 04:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  If everyone did that, what do you think would happen to the caps?
Carriers *want* you to guzzle by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-01-27 20:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

If oil companies' made cars, would they be fuel efficient? Hell, no. The more gas sold, the more oil profits.
It is the same with phone companies. The want you to call and use a lot of data traffic. What they don't want, are flat rates, where they get stuck with the bill. They want to charge every second to the customer. And every bit of unused bandwidth is lost profit for them.

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Well, duh. by MrEricSir · 2012-01-27 20:52 · 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."
Real Scandal by DarkOx · 2012-01-28 00:24 · Score: 4, Insightful

No the real scandal is the carriers marketing these phones based on all these data intensive features and one or more of the following:
1) Not upgrading the infrastructure to support the offerings.
Inadequate density of towers in metros, lack of coverage or obsolete network support in other areas
2) Not being realistic about the actual cost of the services with typical use cases
They need to be clear that if you stream Netflix for an hour and half at the gym everyday in additon to other use it my run you a few grand in overages
3) Not being realistic about presentation of use cases.
Stop showing people they can stream music and video constantly in the ads unless, they can (for an affordable price)
4) Not being able to actually support the products and features they are selling even if they did upgrade infrastructure and selling it anyway.
Spectrum is limited, it might actually not be possible to put one of these handsets in every pocket.

--
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The police can just confiscate the cloud by tepples · 2012-01-28 01:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

take a photo of police doing naughty things? Best to have the photo "in the cloud" before they can confiscate camera.
The police can just confiscate the cloud. Megaupload anyone?
1. Re:The police can just confiscate the cloud by Sponge+Bath · 2012-01-28 02:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  They can't do that to iCloud because Apple protects it with teams of iNinjas.
Re:Hi! by stewbacca · 2012-01-28 01:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, we'd never want any articles about the world's most valuable tech company on a tech forum, amiright?
Re:Siri by SpinyNorman · 2012-01-28 02:43 · Score: 4, Insightful

The point to be understood here is that Siri is not merely about voice transcription, nor is it about the transfer of voice input. That is just one part of the process. The next part is using the result of its transcription algorithm as input to a natural language processing engine that likely uses various other statistical methods to pick out certain words, analyze the grammatical structure of the input, and determine the sentence's most likely intent. This is what Wolfram|Alpha attempts to do. The final part is to have the computer search what resources are available to it and provide data or perform an action that (hopefully) is what the user wanted. None of these steps are trivial.
Actually you've entirely missed what's at the core of Siri, and you're also wrongly giving Wolfram Alpha the credit for figuring out the intent of what you're asking Siri to do!
The core technology of Siri is the artificial intelligence component which was originally developed by SRI (S.R.I = "Siri") under a US army DARPA contract. The SRI project was called "Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes" (CALO), and was then taken by the startup company Siri who extended it into what it is today. Siri was then aquired by Apple.
The DARPA/SRI/Siri AI component is where the intelligence of Siri comes from - how it figures out what you mean (maintaining the conversation context and asking for clarification if needed) and how to do it. In some cases it might do what you ask by interfacing with applications (calendar, e-mail, etc) on your iPhone, in other cases it may do a web search or go to Wolfram Alpha to find or calculate information you've asked for, and in other cases it goes out to specialized web service to do "real world" stuff like ordering taxis or making restaurant reservations that you've asked for.
Wolfram Alpha has nothing to do with the smarts of Siri - it's merely one service that Siri uses once it's done the hard part of figuring out what you want and determining that Alpha is the appropriate way to do what you want. It's no different to Siri sometime using web search to get info for you if it figures out that's what it needs to do.