How often does your smartphone phone home?
As you probably already know, smartphones can (and do) gather a lot of information about their users and then āphone home,ā meaning send them to the companies behind their operating system; usually, Google or Apple.
According to a new study, Google, in particular, likes to keep tabs on its users. The study analysed how often Android phones and iPhones send information to Googleās and Appleās servers during a 24-hour period, distinguishing between the amount of data collected in idle mode and during normal use.
The results are pretty clear: even when not used, Android phones send information to Google around 40 times per hour, compared to just 4 times iPhones send info to Appleās servers. During normal use, that total rises to 90 information requests per hour for Android phones compared to 18 for iPhones.
Interestingly Google even collects more data from iPhone users than Apple itself does. This, however, only works when the phone is used. In idle mode iPhones very rarely communicate with Googleās servers.Ā