In repsonse to "Hey. More data heavy devices use more bandwidth," I think it's brilliant.
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Study Finds Wireless Data Consumption of iPhone 4S Doubled from iPhone 4
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What he said.
iTunes match is constantly comparing playlists when you make changes on any device. It downloads cover art and of course, you can download matched songs without even thinking about it if it is part of a playlist you don't have downloaded, it will just keeping going through the songs and downloading them as long as you are listening. Also, when you first turn on iTunes Match, it has to match your playlists to the one in the cloud from your PC. In my experience, that took a few hours and it continued over 3G making changes.
If you have iTunes match, every time you open the "Music" app, watch how long your data wheel spins for while it synchs. I have never used over 600 Mg, and I went over my 2 gig cap this month. I'm sure Siri and things like pages/numbers backup have something to do with it, but i am convinced that iTunes match is the main culprit.
Fair enough, my mistake. Must be down to Siri and iMessage then - theres not much else that could be causing it.
I agree that sending more pictures would increase the bandwidth used, however sending a standard iMessage would have such a negligible affect on your data allowance.
Again, there are the behavioral explanations, like my HSPA+ data is faster (on AT&T at least), and so I do more surfing because it's less painful. OTOH my data consumption 3GS vs. 4S has not changed that much.
iMessage really shouldn't be a major factor since it is available on any device running iOS 5, including WiFi only devices such as iPod touches and the non-3G iPads. Apparently, iMessage is automatically doing lossy image and video compression, with more compression (smaller files) when the sender is connected via cellular data rather than WiFi.
The two really unique features in the iPhone 4S are the higher resolution camera (thus larger photos and videos) and Siri.
As the original post states, even high-volume Siri users shouldn't be using adding a huge amount of monthly data use, maybe 30MB per month if all queries were executed over a cellular data connection per the ArsTechnica study.
The camera hardware differences are more substantial. The iPhone 4 has a 5-megapixel camera whereas the iPhone 4S has an 8-megapixel camera, a roughly 60% increase in still image data. More importantly, HD video recording has gone from 720p at 30fps on the older handset to 1080p at 30fps on the iPhone 4S which is something like 125% more pixels per frame.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)
This. iPhone lovers/heavy users upgrade
charlesbobby said:
This. iPhone lovers/heavy users upgrade
My data usage quadrupled with the upgrade from a 4 to a 4s. As far as I know, my actual demand for data has not changed at all. I have a had each model of the iPhone and I can assure you there is no "new toy" syndrome. I don't use Siri since it seldom works. I don't do iTunes match or sync to the cloud. I have most of the location services turned off. As far as I can tell, I am doing nothing different from before. I am just glad I didn't give up my unlimited data plan as I was considering downgrading to the 200mb plan. I spend most of my time on wifi and have been using 50 to 60 mb monthly - 100 tops - so I didn't really need the unlimited plan. Now I have had 2 consecutive months of 260 mb or more with no increase in my demand. I have noticed that sometimes it gets hot all on its own. This might sound weird, but I wonder if the phone is using data for some reason of its own.
I got my unlocked iPhone 4S a couple days before Thanksgiving and my billing cycle started the 2nd of every month.
To be honest, I rarely turn on Wi-Fi even on my iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4. With all the speediest, the network speed on my iPhone 4S is on-par or even faster than my home DSL connection.
However, I received 'High Data Usage Alert' messages from AT&T that I was within their top 5% heavy data user. For now, I'm using Wi-Fi as much as possible.
I do have iTunes Match/Spotify/XM subscription.
To be honest, I rarely turn on Wi-Fi even on my iPhone 3G, 3GS, and 4. With all the speediest, the network speed on my iPhone 4S is on-par or even faster than my home DSL connection.
However, I received 'High Data Usage Alert' messages from AT&T that I was within their top 5% heavy data user. For now, I'm using Wi-Fi as much as possible.
I do have iTunes Match/Spotify/XM subscription.
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"doubled" what "doubled" how does it "double" doubled can be anything and if u used 2 GB on your 4 before i doubt u'll suddenly use 4 GB on a 4S. maybe if u used 100 mb before it "doubled" to 200 mb but why is another question.
iMessage can't be blamed as the 4 can use that just as well and there's been WhatsApp for years.
11 GB ??? OMG thats more than i use in a year on my iPhone
iMessage can't be blamed as the 4 can use that just as well and there's been WhatsApp for years.
11 GB ??? OMG thats more than i use in a year on my iPhone
Thankful for UNLIMITED DATA...
Doesn't do us much good when they throttle it.
I have 5 lines on my account, 4 have "Unlimited Data"
Only one line uses about 10 GB per month, and that one is throttled every month.
WTF?!~
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Who cares? What do you work for AT&T or something?
I agree, using Safari on the 4S vs. the 4 approaches desktop speed (well a slow desktop) for browsing. I yank in more MBs since during the same period of time I don't have to wait a long for them to be rendered in my hand.
Using a desktop for 8 hours at work, I don't see the incentive to turn on my Mac after work. I sold my iMac in 2010 and got myself a MBA (light and small footprint) and Mac mini server (mostly for storage). The iPhone is now my primary device to the Internet and the AT&T HSPA+ network is quite fast IMHO.
I work at IT and coworkers think I'm mental for my computer usage.
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Ever since iCloud and iTunes Match I must have increased my data usage 5 fold.
I use an iPhone 4.
With 1000 photo's and 4000 unmatched mp3's floating between my iPhone 4 and my laptop, it's not surprising.
The only surprising thing is that anyone could think that this is down to the difference between the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 4, lol.
Ever since iCloud and iTunes Match I must have increased my data usage 5 fold.
I use an iPhone 4.
With 1000 photo's and 4000 unmatched mp3's floating between my iPhone 4 and my laptop, it's not surprising.
The only surprising thing is that anyone could think that this is down to the difference between the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 4, lol.
Oh yea data usage is way up for me since I upgraded from the 3GS to the 4GS and now I get notices from AT&T that I am in the top 5% of the data usage, hmmm watching youtube and netflix is really pushing there data limit's. There lucky because if I had unlimited on the ipad I'd be getting 2 notices a month.
Amazing how on a totally clear day no clouds the bars go from 5 to 3 and I'm next to there tower.
The local stores answer is , its the iPhone talk to apple our network is fantastic and great.
Amazing how on a totally clear day no clouds the bars go from 5 to 3 and I'm next to there tower.
The local stores answer is , its the iPhone talk to apple our network is fantastic and great.
Of course the usage of the 4S compared with the 4 is going to be twice as much: the 3G speeds on the chip in the 4S are twice that of the 4!
Yeah right.