Help me understand iPhone data usage....

[Internaut]

Hello,

Mostly happy Android user here. Well, happy except when I'm roaming. Even with background data restricted, it seems my Samsung S3 managed to sneak in a meg here, a meg there and so on. When those megs costs £8 each, things get expensive. I've had to switch mobile data off completely.

I don't remember my old 3GS being anything like this bad, but perhaps I'm looking at the greener grass on the iOS side of the fence. With this in mind, what kinds of voumes of data am I looking at with the following scenarios, assuming an up to date iPhone 4s or iPhone 5:

• No usage of web browsing, Facebook and so on while outside of WiFi, unless in an emergency
• Notifications switched on for email, Facebook, Twitter and so on
• iCloud email enabled with Push
• Corporage Exchange Server set to push, but probably headers only and sync for no more than a week
• Hotmail set to pull, except when on WiFi?

I guess what I'm after is an understanding of how well an iPhone behaves when I'm not staring at it.....

 

[hafr]

Hello,

Mostly happy Android user here. Well, happy except when I'm roaming. Even with background data restricted, it seems my Samsung S3 managed to sneak in a meg here, a meg there and so on. When those megs costs £8 each, things get expensive. I've had to switch mobile data off completely.

I don't remember my old 3GS being anything like this bad, but perhaps I'm looking at the greener grass on the iOS side of the fence. With this in mind, what kinds of voumes of data am I looking at with the following scenarios, assuming an up to date iPhone 4s or iPhone 5:

• No usage of web browsing, Facebook and so on while outside of WiFi, unless in an emergency
• Notifications switched on for email, Facebook, Twitter and so on
• iCloud email enabled with Push
• Corporage Exchange Server set to push, but probably headers only and sync for no more than a week
• Hotmail set to pull, except when on WiFi?

I guess what I'm after is an understanding of how well an iPhone behaves when I'm not staring at it.....

Notifications only take up a few KB each, and e-mails are only partially downloaded so for me it wouldn't be more than maybe a MB per day in total with what you're describing. But the big thing here is e-mail, despite only downloading parts of each, loads of them will mean loads of data.

Doesn't your carrier offer some kind of package, like 100 MB for five quids or similar?

 

[Internaut]

Notifications only take up a few KB each, and e-mails are only partially downloaded so for me it wouldn't be more than maybe a MB per day in total with what you're describing. But the big thing here is e-mail, despite only downloading parts of each, loads of them will mean loads of data.

Doesn't your carrier offer some kind of package, like 100 MB for five quids or similar?

I'm afraid not. There are packages available for most of the developed world, but nothing for West Africa (even though I'm with Orange UK and roaming onto Orange Ivory Coast. The volume of email to my Corporate account isn't high though.

Edit: Looks like whatever phone I use, it's best to keep mobile data switched off when roaming in certain places. Back when I had a Blackberry, it used less than a meg per week .

 

[Internaut]

Ok, I think I have some harder answers. I think part of the problem of discovery here is that I've been asking the wrong specific questions, meaning I end up saying/writing too much to say what I mean. I finally got my search terms right, and got better answers:

The search: iPhone vs Android data efficiency

Some evidence from the search:

Sprint: Adding iPhones Actually Lightens Our Load (anecdotal)

Android vs iPhone Data Consumption Models: Blog from Onavo

So, it would seem the iPhone's model of data consumption is very user driven. This would certainly explain why my 3GS rarely used more than 130MB a month in the UK and why I struggle to stay within the 250MB constraints of my current plan (and why I've just learned an expensive lesson when roaming without a plan).

I might just be about to return to iPhone...... Weighing up my options.