Siri Data Usage Tested, Average of 63 Kb Per Query Used

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Siri is one of the highlights of Apple’s latest iPhone 4S. The intelligent — and sometimes witty — personal assistant works through speech recognition, which requires a data connection. But how much data does Siri actually consume?

Ars Technica‘s Jacqui Cheng did some informal tests on Siri’s actual data consumption, taking into consideration different tasks that a user might be expected to ask Siri. These include simple instructions like setting up appointments, and also instructions that required the iPhone 4S to look up information online or through a Google search.

The findings: Siri isn’t too heavy on data usage, so iPhone 4S owners using Siri through their data connections need not worry about Siri eating up their monthly data allocations. Short commands that only require local processing take up less than 100 Kb of data, while longer dictations can use up an average of 100 Kb of data or so. Here are some findings:

• Setting up appointments: 36.7 Kb per query
• Questions that required Siri to look up information on the Web: 94.7 Kb per query
• Overall average: 63 Kb per query

Cheng also tested Siri’s data usage with email and SMS dictation:

• SMS message: 15 Kb
• 15 to 40 word emails: 72.5 Kb

Ars Technica contributors were then broken down into different usage patterns: 1-3 Siri commands per day, 4-6 per day,  and 10-15 per day. This means that most people would use Siri a few times a day to set alarms, appointments and the occasional question that requires some online research. But unless Siri is a novelty for you, it’s most likely that you won’t be using Siri more than 20 times a day.

Adding this up, if you use Siri 10 times a day in a 30-day month, usage will be at about 18.9 MB. Use it 15 times a day, and monthly consumption would be at 28.4 MB, which is not really that bad considering most data plans allow for 1 or 2 GB of data usage a month, and some carriers, like Sprint, still offer unlimited plans. Of course, you can go heavy on data usage while you’re at home or the office using your residential or business broadband connection via WiFi.

But these are simple tests, really. Other users might have different usage patterns.  How many times do you use Siri in a day, and what kind of questions and commands do you use?