Apple’s golden-child voice recognition software, Siri, is causing owners of the iPhone 4S to use almost twice as much data compared with the handset’s predecessor, according to network firm Arieso.
When Siri was first released to the masses it was called a “virtual personal assistant” and it is powered by a artificial-intelligence feature that allows iPhone users to schedule appointments, write text messages, check email and the local weather (checkout our review on Siri here). It is one of the major selling points of the iPhone 4S and it could find its way into many other Apple products, including its mythical “iTV.” The Siri program always needs a data connection to work, even if you’re just trying to set an alarm – the speech recognition is handled through a combination of on-device processing and with the cloud.
The fact that the popular voice recognition software is consuming so much data definitely places more pressure on wireless carriers as they continue to build out their networks. Verizon’s network could potentially be hurt more, especially since the largest wireless carrier in the United States recently announced it sold a record 4.2 million iPhone’s over the holidays (from a total of 10.7 million devices overall).
Although the network firm points out a huge data issue associated with Siri, I’m not at all surprised of the findings. This isn’t a Apple-Siri problem, instead, it’s a bigger issue with how mobile data is handled . It’s clear that data caps aren’t working because apps and newer services like Siri need more data to run, and carriers simply aren’t offering enough of it.
iPhone 4S owners out there, is Siri causing you to use more data?
[via Bloomberg]