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iPhone 5s Owners Using 20% More Cellular Data Than Last Year's iPhone 5 Owners

We used to have unlimited data. Then somehow we regressed. For how many more years can these wireless companies get away with these tiny data caps? Does Moore's Law hold up for data usage? Each tier should be doubled every two years.

You know what would be a good customer retention mechanism? Each time a customer signs a contract extension (~2 years), the wireless company should give them a larger data cap at the same rate. According to my coworkers AT&T has gotten much better here in town so there isn't much of anything keeping me from going back to AT&T from Verizon, maybe aside from free tethering that I only sometimes use. But if I had built up a large data cap then it would hurt more to switch.

Does anyone get the feeling that carriers just don't give a crap if you leave them anymore? I always thought that's why they had 18 month phone upgrades. Lock them in before their contract expires. Now they stopped doing that and grandfathered unlimited plans, what's the point in staying?
 
Pompiliu said:
50GB cap? My god that's low. You download a blu-ray movie and that's it. :eek:

Thank god i have 1Gbps down and no limit as i download a lot of stuff. Last month i've downloaded almost 1.5TB: mostly bluray movies (over 30GB each) and lots of tvshows and lossless music. :)
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You still didn't get the warning letter from your provider?
 
mrsir2009 said:
Where I live we still have 30GB data plans for ADSL2 :eek:
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I don't think I've ever had home internet with a data cap. Bandwidth caps, yes, but no data caps. Perhaps it's an American thing, since I am in the US? Seems to be the better deal since you really don't have to watch how much you use at all.
 
iMessage & FaceTime.

Two awesome features of iOS that use data that Android phones lack.

This is why.
 
mKTank said:
There are stores that sell digital copies of movies, you know...
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And show me a legit digital movie stores that sell it in BD quality? 40GiB per movie downloads?

There's only one place to get that.. Torrent
You know what torrent means?
 
iSayuSay said:
And show me a legit digital movie stores that sell it in BD quality? 40GiB per movie downloads?

There's only one place to get that.. Torrent
You know what torrent means?
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There are many out there, a lot of which are lesser known, but they're all legit. They usually cap out at 20GB (because who cares about behind the scenes) but they're Bluray quality. Do your own research if it interests you, I'm not a personal assistant.
 
mejsric said:
And you think piracy is cool???
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A little judgemental aren't we?

Is downloading TV broadcast football shows wrong? They were shown on TV for free weren't they? I mean, what if I watched the game live but recorded it for my dad to watch later but someone, like my sister erased it so that she could record her dumb show. And then my dad was going to kill me because he thinks I forgot to record the game even though I did. So I find the game on bit torrent and download it and show it off my computer and my dad never knows the difference and after that I delete it. I mean what I want to know is, is that ok? And I kind need to know quick because dad just called and he is going to be back home soon. Well? Can I?
 
mKTank said:
There are many out there, a lot of which are lesser known, but they're all legit. They usually cap out at 20GB (because who cares about behind the scenes) but they're Bluray quality. Do your own research if it interests you, I'm not a personal assistant.
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I did and I'm being honest here. I cant find a legal movie store with uncompressed BD quality.

As the post you quoted which quoted pompiliu's post earlier. He said he downloaded lots of BD movies (over 30GB). In which case I doubt he acquired them legally. So brag about them here is not exactly a smart move.
 
iSayuSay said:
I did and I'm being honest here. I cant find a legal movie store with uncompressed BD quality.

As the post you quoted which quoted pompiliu's post earlier. He said he downloaded lots of BD movies (over 30GB). In which case I doubt he acquired them legally. So brag about them here is not exactly a smart move.
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Are the cops staking out this club?
 
RobertMartens said:
A little judgemental aren't we?

Is downloading TV broadcast football shows wrong? They were shown on TV for free weren't they? I mean, what if I watched the game live but recorded it for my dad to watch later but someone, like my sister erased it so that she could record her dumb show. And then my dad was going to kill me because he thinks I forgot to record the game even though I did. So I find the game on bit torrent and download it and show it off my computer and my dad never knows the difference and after that I delete it. I mean what I want to know is, is that ok? And I kind need to know quick because dad just called and he is going to be back home soon. Well? Can I?
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Cool story bro!
 
Most data I ever used in a month

4S - 1.3GB
5S - 8GB

What. The. Hell. ???

So glad for unlimited data.
 
I used to use about 1GB a week, when my data was throttled at 5GB...

Then I switched to a truly unlimited plan and caught myself using 4GB per week, on the same iPhone 5 I was using on my previous plan, while I was waiting for the delivery of my new 5S.

So for me it's more about the plan than the device.
 
Control Center

Maybe they're inadvertently turning off wifi from the Control Center just like my other half did. It was only when she mentioned she'd had an alert from Vodafone telling her she was approaching her monthly limit did I suggest checking if WIFI was still enabled ;-)
 
JohnMantooth said:
No mention of Background App Refresh being a factor? I never touched my 2 GB limit until I upgraded to iOS7. Then I suddenly found myself at risk of going over for the first time ever... Flipped Background App Refresh off and I'm back to my normal data usage.
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That's not very likely to be behind the difference in the article as that difference is between devices and not between versions of the OS.

If it had been Background App Refresh all those 4s en 5 models that have upgraded to iOS7 (>80%?) would have had the same data usage as the 5s.
 
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ZOZO said:
I don't think I've ever had home internet with a data cap. Bandwidth caps, yes, but no data caps. Perhaps it's an American thing, since I am in the US? Seems to be the better deal since you really don't have to watch how much you use at all.
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Yeah, in NZ it's the other way round: We have data caps, but never bandwidth caps. It is changing a bit now, though... Unlimited plans are starting to come out, and they definitely have them in Australia.
 
taphil said:
Incessant tab reloading.
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I find that extremely annoying on my brand new retina iPad Mini, if I have more than two tabs open they will almost always refresh when I switch between them. Almost makes the iPad feel like a downgrade from my Galaxy Note II.

Cubytus said:
Considering how studios rip off honest consumer, imposing artificial limits or shortening films because they think we're too dumb for them, yes I do.
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Nobody is forcing you to do business with them if you don't like their business strategies, and just because you won't doesn't mean it's ok for you to steal their IP.
 
Traverse said:
Their "multitasking" is a lie! :p

It is extremely annoying for IM apps that get flushed out of RAM in the background and you no longer receive messages.

But I'm on a 4S with 512MB of RAM...
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I hated that, especially apps that hadn't updated to multitask with iOS 4. I used to use IM+ and before they updated it it used to have to "Resume" each time you went back into it. On my GPRS signal at the time it used to take a good 30-45 seconds to resume every time.

iSayuSay said:
There's only one place to get that.. Torrent
You know what torrent means?
Click to expand...

Do you know what torrent means? Torrents aren't automatically illegal, it's just a popular way of sharing illegally. There are plenty of legal files being torrented.
 
So the people who spend the money to upgrade their phone are the same people who use their phone more than others. Insightful report.
 
Nobody else is going to take this one? Okay, I'll bite. WTF is the HTC Sensation, and how does it eat so much data?
 
WiFi

Interestingly I think I'm using less mobile data since I moved to an iPhone 5s because I get free WiFi in many more locations than I used to.

I have a 10GB/month plan but don't break 2GB. That said the overall cost is less than the 2GB/month plan had with my previous iPhone 4S.
 
Is this really anything more than anecdotal data? If I were to gather data like this for at least 2 years without being able to draw any conclusions from it, I'd start to worry about my methods...
 
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