iPhone 4S twice as data-hungry as predecessor, study claims

Apple’s latest smartphone, the iPhone 4S, devours twice as much data as its predecessor iPhone 4, and Siri – its voice-activated personal assistant – may be a factor, a mobile network management firm’s study has suggested.

 

Mobile network management company Arieso said iPhone 4S owners use twice as much data as iPhone 4 users and three times as much data as iPhone 3G owners, tech site CNET reported.

 

CNET cited a Bloomberg interview with Arieso chief technology officer Michael Flanagan where he said Siri requires regular connections with Apple servers and the Web to work.

 

Flanagan also said the iPhone 4S regularly connects with Apple servers to sync content, making it more likely to use data.

 

“The introduction of increasingly sophisticated devices, coupled with growing consumer demand, is creating unrelenting pressure on mobile networks. The capacity crunch is still a very real threat for mobile operators, and it looks set to only get harder in 2012. The mobile industry needs new investment and new approaches to boost network performance and manage the customer experience,” CNET quoted Flanagan as saying.

 

This may have major implications both consumers and carriers as many consumers have been forced into tiered data plans by many carriers, limiting the amount of data they can consume a month.

 

But the CNET article said the study also found only a relatively small number of users are consuming massive amounts of data.

 

Other smartphones

 

On the other hand, Arieso also noted users of Samsung Galaxy S users consume 199 percent more downlink data than iPhone 3G owners.

 

It added HTC’s Desire S beats out even the iPhone 4S, trumping iPhone 3G uplink data usage by 323 percent.

 

CNET cited a Bloomberg report saying Arieso conducted its study on a European network and analyzed data from one million subscribers.

 

A separate article on The Next Web said it is likelier that the increase is simply due to a natural upslope in data usage, along with the cloud backups and other network services of iCloud.

 

“But even then, it’s not much more data than any other current smartphone,” it said. — TJD, GMA News