The iPhone’s standby mode is coming under fire from the state-controlled media in China, which released a new report claiming Apple’s smartphone is stealing data from customers.
High data rates are currently a huge issues in China, so the China’s state TV, CCTV, ran a test to see how much data bandwidth the top smartphones are ‘stealing’ while you think the device is off. The report accuses iPhones of stealing up to $10 of bandwidth every month.
CCTV put ten smartphone to the test by leaving them on standby for 120 hours. They they tracked the devices’ data usage via China Mobile’s official site. All ten phones wasted some data in standby, but the iPhone was the worst, passively chewing through 80 MB of data. Sony and Nokia’s phones only used 4MB of data during the 120 standby period.
China Mobile charges RMB 15 for 110 MB of bandwidth, so those little megabytes could add up to around RMB 60 (about $10) over a month, charges the Chinese media. Apple and China’s state media have had a rocky relationship over the last few years as the network claimed Apple’s a security threat. Despite the bad press, China has become Apple’s top market for iPhone sales.
Source: Tech in Asia
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
