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Siri's Impact on Data Usage Examined
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Thank god for real unlimited over here which means i could care less about data usage 
however siri is one of those things u play with for a few days, mostly to show off and will never use again after a week?
Id seriously tell the person to **** on a public transportation
however siri is one of those things u play with for a few days, mostly to show off and will never use again after a week?
Id seriously tell the person to **** on a public transportation
The only advantage to unlimited data here is not having to worry about it. But 30MB of usage each month is nothing on a 2GB plan. So even folks with limited data plans won't have to worry. I personally have unlimited data on my AT&T iPhone and I have not switched off it because I don't like having to worry about it. I also have the grandfathered 200 text messages for $5 per month with AT&T -- which is fantastic now with iMessage.
On my Verizon iPad I buy the 1GB data plan every once in a while and I never come close to the limit. My AT&T iPhone usage has been under 250MB most months, so I have considered switching to the cheaper limited data plans that allow tethering, but then I wonder what new feature is around the corner that may or may not be data intensive. So it is nice not having to worry about it, but certainly not having unlimited data is nothing to stress about either for most folks.
Just internal processing, which is also probably why it sucks so bad and never understands what you say.
To simplify how Siri works, it doesn't send a file. It's much like when you call a toll free number witch voice activated prompts, and you say, "Customer service" except Siri is a little more like VOIP and acts as a middle man. Certain elements of Siri process on the phone itself. Say for example, "Siri make an appointment to have lunch with Mom on Weds at 3pm." Siri understands mom and appointment natively, and while the rest of your words are sent out into cyber space Siri is accessing the calendar database in the background getting everything ready. The remote server sends back your voice as text, in which Siri then displays the entire shebang on the screen for confirmation.
So while Siri does "learn" as you use it, the bulk of heavy lifting is done in the cloud because it's voice recognition engine on the phone itself is very limited. Even desk top versions of Nuance software work this way. If you ever used a voice transcription app in the past, you'll remember how many inaccuracies there used to be. Now, they're fairly flawless but they work with an installed engine on your computer and in tandem with transcription over the internet. Even if Apple would want to suck up a good bit of your phone's storage, it wouldn't be as accurate or have the power to process your requests.
It is a beta product still, and I think it's main appeal for daily use is for business people who use lots of calendaring and mobile email and travel a lot.
Though, even for the average person, it's got it's uses. Like needing to tell a freind you're going to be late and letting it send the text message for you instead of killing yourself while texting and driving.
Even if you use is just a few times a month, those few times are usually pretty valuable or handy. Just because YOU don't use it all the time, doesn't make it worthless to yourself or other people.
Even without unlimited, 4x that data usage is not really even a considerable dent in a 2GB plan.
An absolute drop in the bucket compared to all the data that the iCloud services and backups are moving. When I see my next iPhone backup is 5 GB, 30 MB in a month is absolutely meaningless to me. Even over my 2 GB ATT plan, that is only 1.5%. Sirius laughs at Siri's restrained usage ;-)
Still, good work Ars.
Still, good work Ars.
Great info. That was probably my only concern about Siri (and also how well it performs if it made it to the iPhone 4 on Edge/2G data transfer rate). I'm guessing it would be slow and hence Apple eliminated that option for us to switch between E and 3G.
The estimates are not addressing how the data is transmitted. It addresses how much it is. If you are at the office and connected to WiFi all day, your 3G data is actually less than the estimated 20-30MB/month.
My sincere hope is that Apple will sell an upgrade app for iPhone 4 and/or iPad so that the server use is covered. I would not mind to pay $40 for Siri to get it on other iDevices. I just bought my iPhone 4 in March when the Verizon phone came out and I payed over $800 each for my iPad 1 and 2 (considering the care plans etc. might have been over $1k, actually) and I feel kind of left out. I understand that they need a reason to sell the iPhone 4S. Siri is undoubtedly the reason for that for people who do not care if they have 8GB or 64GB SDD. On the other had, Apple could make a ton of money selling this service to their prior customers for about $40.
Voice Control is internal and needs no network access at all.
However, in order to use it you must disable Siri, which triggers this warning: "The information Siri uses to respond to your requests will be removed from Apple servers. If you want to use Siri later, it will take time to re-send this information."
I would prefer, if Siri does not have network access to, that it revert to an abridged version that can at least do basic requests that do not need network access. Or at the very least revert to voice control--though honestly my results with voice control were always horrible (play Bruce Springsteen.... "Calling Jack Bernstein" UHG!!!).
Michael
Agreed.
It would be very useful if she could process commands like:
"Add to my school calendar: meeting in classroom 415 at 12:30 on the 25th."
What's she end up doing? I get a notice that I have a meeting at 4:15 on the 25th, on my default calendar.
This command could be a lot easier to tell Siri then to tap it out myself, but she botches understanding it to the point that I have to type it out.
She also doesn't understand names like Emilee anywhere near as well as the old voice commands did.
Back to the focus of the article, it's nice to know how miniscal the data consumed by Siri is. I average on 1 GB / month on my 2 GB plan, so even once Siri is useful enough for me to give her a few dozen tasks a day she still wont take up much data.
I'm the same way. But Apple trolls will downgrade your post because even if they haven't even tried Siri, it's THE BEST and MUST HAVE feature.
It's useful when driving, but outside of that, people are weird enough talking in restrooms, etc.
30 MB a month isn't too bad at all.
Agreed. The data usage isn't bad at all. I was wondering whether it was going to use a lot of data and thankfully it doesn't, especially since most data plans only include 2GB.
Really is a small amount. I'm actually surprised. I've been waiting for such testing. Impressive, very impressive.
A Lean Mean Assisting Machine.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A334)
Only Siri, and the voices in my head. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. I think Siri is getting jealous, she told me I had to stop talking to the other voices.
MacAddict1978 said:
Only Siri, and the voices in my head. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. I think Siri is getting jealous, she told me I had to stop talking to the other voices.
I've actually been pleasantly surpassed how frequently I use it—goofing off aside. I definitely use it for the "Call John Doe" feature, but I also use it for text messages on occasion (sometimes to initiate the message, sometimes to dictate it), text dictation, setting timers and reminders, playing music (including playlists or creating genius playlists), map lookups and directions, initiating searches, and a little more as I gradually figure out more about it.
Outside the Apple-specific features, I've found I'm using WolframAlpha queries more and more, and this use is gradually scaling with how much more familiar I'm becoming with WolframAlpha. It can actually do some pretty fantastic stuff. Hint: you can say, "Wolfram, [search]". for example, "Wolfram, what is the scientific name for weasel", or "Wolfram, random integer below 21". Edit: the more I think of it, the more I realize I use Siri for. There's math, unit conversion, information gathering (e.g. asking who someone is, or getting the definition of a word), and more. WolframAlpha has some good examples which might be made to work.
I thought it might be good, but I didn't expect to use it for a whole lot. I never used the old iOS 4 voice control feature. I'm not sure if my fondness for Siri is because I've been using it more to become comfortable and familiar with it, or if it just has to do with my specific circumstances.
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37 k per question is WAAAAY to much !!!
i suppose they are not sending the sound of your voice, so what are they doing ???
looks like someone screwed up, 1K would already be a lot, it should be just a few hundred bytes !
not that i care, i only use WIFI, but this is insanely bad programming.
the processing of the voice should (and probably does) happen locally, so their is no explanation for this.
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a SMALL amount, really ???
are you out of your mind ??
"please remind me to call my mother on her birthday" should be 50 bytes !! not one thousand times more !
and it should not be sent over the network at all, i really don't see why stuff like setting reminders or calling people would require a connection to a server at all !
37 k per question is WAAAAY to much !!!
i suppose they are not sending the sound of your voice, so what are they doing ???
looks like someone screwed up, 1K would already be a lot, it should be just a few hundred bytes !
not that i care, i only use WIFI, but this is insanely bad programming.
the processing of the voice should (and probably does) happen locally, so their is no explanation for this.
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Really is a small amount. I'm actually surprised. I've been waiting for such testing. Impressive, very impressive.
A Lean Mean Assisting Machine.
a SMALL amount, really ???
are you out of your mind ??
"please remind me to call my mother on her birthday" should be 50 bytes !! not one thousand times more !
and it should not be sent over the network at all, i really don't see why stuff like setting reminders or calling people would require a connection to a server at all !
I don't know this definitively, but I believe your voice is delivered over the internet for server-side processing. This would account for the data being stored on Apple's servers and the warning when Siri is disabled. This would allow for Apple to fluidly upgrade Siri without releasing major OS versions (aside from extending new capabilities). This would allow for advanced server-side processing without great regard for phone capabilities. I also know this is how Nuance's products work. As for the size, there's also the possibility of images being returned (such is the case with WolframAlpha results).
I would bet that the programming is actually rather brilliant and that Apple has scaled down use about as much as they reasonably can without impacting quality or limiting voice/data processing to the phone.
And finally, 37 KB is not that much. Even for someone with a 200 MB/month data plan, that easily accommodates some regular Siri use when browsing on a carrier's data network, and of course there's Wifi as well...
All responses are processed server-side, just for understanding what you're saying. It's be better on your battery life to have Apple do the crunching than your phone.
I think it varies from person to person. I use it all the time to set timers, alarms, reminders, and to text people when I'm commuting and want to actually pay attention to the people around me. In fact, just the other day I was doing a Siri-text to someone to confirm dinner plans, and some idiot with his nose in his phone ran right into me and ended up on his behind (I walk NYC-style - fast and rigid, unfortunately for him). It's all about use case, but it's not like anyone has to pay extra for it, so whatever.