Siri is not doubling data consumption you morons
It really bothers me when I see news outlets post crap about Apple without even thinking. Bloomberg, telegraph, zdnet, businessinsider, engadget, and venturebeat are all claiming that using Siri on your iPhone 4s can double your data usage.
They're all basing this off of this report from Arieso that claims
iPhone 4S users are the “hungriest” data consumers, demanding twice as much data as iPhone 4 users and three times as much as iPhone 3G users
Now, I don't doubt they're right. But the report does not say anything about Siri or even indicate that they know what kind of data is being transmitted. They're just assuming that Siri is the cause of this because it's a feature not offered on any other iOS device.
Personally I blame the data usage on iCloud and iTunes Match. Siri transmits small bits of data for each request. According to Ars Technica, Siri isn't really that bad with data.
If you use Siri 2-3 times per day at an average of 63KB per instance, you might expect to use 126KB to 189KB per day, or 3.7 to 5.5MB per month. For 4-6 times a day, that might come out to 252KB to 378KB per day, or 7.4 to 11MB per month. If you use it 10-15 times per day, you might end up using 630KB to 945KB per day, or 18.5 to 27.7MB per month.
The above stats don't t even factor in if you use Siri while on a WiFi network. 27.7MB a month on an iPhone isn't that much data at all. I can't speak for other iPhone users but my monthly usage is anywhere between 1-2GB a month.
Compare this to the 2-5MB that you can transfer every three minutes when using iTunes Match. And don't forget about the battery life issue most 4S devices had when they were first released. That problem was mainly due to iCloud trying to sync all the time. Who knows how many versions of iOS 5 haven't been upgraded.
This kind of reporting is what really bothers me, especially with all of this TV set crap flying around. Editors will post anything that mentions a new product or potential issue from Apple. Don't be lead on by these news outlets doing whatever they can to gain more eyeballs.
