I have no clue if I’m a typical iPhone user as I’m a software engineer by trade and über-geek by personality. That said, here’s my usage. The first image was after my first full billing cycle. The second is my current usage; my cycle doesn’t expire for another 10 days or so.
Well, I share your über-geek personality, so at least that aspect is controlled. Still, you’re using more data than I am, let alone the average AT&T or Sprint user. The majority of my data usage is probably checking e-mail via IMAP every 10 minutes (no IDLE support, unfortunately), though I do make use of the web when a truly mobile site is available.
I should note that I don’t travel too terribly often, and the couple times I have lately I’ve gone to places where I’ve asked for WiFi access.
I don’t have much to compare to, having never had a smartphone before, but I can tell you I see many non-technically-savvy people doing things on the AT&T data network constantly. Granted they may just be checking Facebook, or on sports scores, and not streaming YouTube or doing something else that’s bandwidth-intensive. However, one thing I’ve noticed about typical iPhone users is that the moment there’s a break in conversation, they’ve whipped out their phones to check on something online.
I try really hard not to be that guy. Some days I do better than others.
Point is, as many have said ad nauseam in the past, the iPhone makes doing anything so fast and easy that even not-geeks can get a lot of use out of them. These are people who I personally think would not be getting smartphones otherwise, and if they did, not using them as much. Every time I use a BlackBerry I’m infuriated by it’s clunkiness within seconds. I haven’t used Windows Mobile since WindowsCE in ~2003, but my memories are not fond. Doing the exact same thing on the iPhone is so much easier and better.
Yes and no. The area where the iPhone really is so much better than anything else out there (save maybe the Pre) is web browsing. The iPhone has made viewing regular, desktop-sized web pages livable on a mobile device, but it also seems to have stunted the growth of web pages designed for mobile devices, which is unfortunate, even for iPhone users. Lots of major sites (i.e., ESPN, CNN, Digg) have pages designed for lower-resolution devices, and on sites like that, I see no difference between using an iPhone or my Q.
Aside from web browsing, I vastly prefer e-mail and text messaging on my Q. Of course, being of the geek persuasion, I can’t claim to be representative of the general population, but I do think it’s safe to say that Apple made a brilliant move in designing Mobile Safari. Not only did they make mobile web browsing livable for the general public, but they seemed to have stopped the development of designed-for-mobile web sites, thus ensuring that the iPhone would be the phone for mobile web browsing.
I don’t know if the iPhone is the hog that AT&T says it is, but I’m certainly not going to sit here and say it’s likely that AT&T is lying… this time.
It’s not that I think AT&T is lying, but if this is right, their average data usage numbers are lower. But who knows the proportion of dumb phones vs. smartphones on each network, which could have a huge effect on the average numbers. Then there’s the differences in 3G coverage, which could certainly impact the results. But still, the question remains: Does AT&T suck because they have to support the iPhone and its users, or do they suck simply because they’re incompetent and/or cheap? :-)
