Flutterby™! : Android vs iPhone: Sprint bandwidth 2011-10-27 16:34:05.152562+00

Android vs iPhone: Sprint bandwidth

2011-10-27 16:34:05.152562+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Ah, spin: The headline reads "iPhone 50% More Efficient Than Android, Says Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, but then you look deeper:

The conference call from Sprint Nextel (S) was a factoid treasure trove for those debating Apple (APPL) v. Android and their operating systems. Hesse said iPhone users are likely to consume significantly less 3G than the typical user of a dual-mode 3G/4G device.

Apparently, in fact, Android users find their phones 50% more useful than iPhones.

That's a weird "iphone sucks androids rules" metric to use. As much as I hate car/computer analogies, that's like saying that people driving 20 mpg vehicles find them 50% more useful than those driving 30 mpg vehicles.

But it's as reasonable to say "people who drive 20k miles a year get more out of their car than people who drive 15k miles per year". My beef is with the original headline's interpretation, I don't have enough information to make any other interpretations other than silly ones.

Later on in the article, it talks about the disparity because the phone (according to them) can get on wifi networks easier, relieving cell networks of some data transfer burden; and that due to the more limited multitasking model and the reliance on push notifications, there are fewer background processes polling on the cell network.

So to strain an analogy, I only drive that 15k miles a year, but I put my car on a high speed train for another 15K.