For the first time I observed the network traffic of an iPhone today. The iPhone was set up in a most privacy oriented way (no iCloud, even not logged in with an Apple ID, no Analytics, no Siri etc.).

The amount of server calls the iPhone was making while I was interacting with it was really brutal! For a company which claims that as much as possible is processed on-device this isn't something which I would have guessed.

Even when it's idle It won't come to rest for a minute. I'm not sure one can legitimately call this "telemetry" anymore. Especially when you're interacting with the Photo App the network traffic increases sharply! The servers seem to be undocumented as it's typical and their names will often contain "img" (probably stands for image). I never opted into "Advanced Visual Search" or how Apple calls it and seeing this made me feel really uncomfortable. Even when you're interacting with banal things like the Settings or Files App something is constantly transmitted to Apple.

In comparison to this my de-googled Android (CalyxOS) is a graveyard. The amount of servercalls it does is close to zero (if not zero, except for when you're interacting with your browser or apps which rely on internet connection of course).

If you want to see it youself, open a Hotspot on your laptop, connect your iPhone with it and use a tool like OpenSnitch.

#ios #android #privacy