Siri is a tremendous addition to Apple’s latest iPhone. But if you’ve already had the pleasure of making it your own virtual assistant, you may have noticed that without a data connection, Siri goes quiet. That’s because the feature connects to Apple’s servers every time you make a request in order to retrieve your answers, or perform the task you have requested.
If you’re a regular Siri user, then, you may be worried about the dent it’s making in your monthly data allowance. But there’s no need to worry, because it’s hardly anything.
Ars Technica has conducted a series of tests in an attempt to establish how much of your data Siri actually consumes when you put it to work. The tests included sourcing information from WolframAlpha and other online sources, and performing tasks such as creating reminders, setting alarms, and dictating messages.
Ars concluded that while Siri does indeed eat into your data allowance, she’s not a greedy beast, and you shouldn’t need to worry about losing your data allowance. On average, Siri consumes just 63KB of data when answering a query, depending on your question:
If you own an iPhone 4S and perform all 11 of these same queries every single day for a month over your carrier’s 3G connection, you can expect to use roughly 20MB or so in a 30-day month. 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.
There’s not a great deal to get worried about based on those figures, and it’s worth noting if you’re hooked up to Wi-Fi, Siri won’t eat any of your data allowance at all. Those who may need to keep an eye on things are the ones with pay-as-you-go plans, who often pay more for data, or those with very low monthly allowances.
[via 9to5Mac]
