How big is a typical WhatsApp message?

[Russell]

In other words, how many individual messages could you send using a Mb of data?

Piece of string question I know but a rough estimate is all that's needed.

A 6-10 line email is in the 10s of kb sort of size, so I'm guessing a WhatsApp message could be similar.

Thanks

[Cudzoziemiec]

My phone tells me it's storing 14,955 WhatsApp messages, 1062 photos and 11 videos for a total of 27.7MB. But it also claims that several of these messages occupy 0kB.

[Greenbank]

In other words, how many individual messages could you send using a Mb of data?

Piece of string question I know but a rough estimate is all that's needed.

A 6-10 line email is in the 10s of kb sort of size, so I'm guessing a WhatsApp message could be similar.

Thanks

It's not as simple as the storage size or anything else.

You've got to account for all of the network traffic incurred in making a connection to the Whatsapp Servers, to/fro of the app checking whether there are new messages for you and updating the connected status of your contacts, sending the message itself, receiving the 'other person has read this' confirmation, disconnection messages, etc and all with the HTTPS and TCP/IP overheads on top of that.

Looking at Settings -> Data and Storage Usage -> Network Usage (in the Whatsapp app). I see:-

Messages

Sent: 962
Received: 11,329
Bytes Sent: 29.1MB
Bytes Recevied: 30.2MB

But sending a message will involve both sending and receiving bytes, so it's not immediately clear how much an individual message will take.

1MB is tiny though, if I divide those numbers by 60 (sent + received = 60MB) I get: Sent: 16, Received: 188

There's also a 'Low Data Usage' option under 'Data and Storage Usage' that may help in this situation.

[Russell]

So you are saying that in your example 16 sent messages and 188 received messages could use about 1MB.  Interesting!

The background is that Mrs R only uses her ancient BB for texting, currently at 2p per text.  Miss R would like her to use WhatsApp for various reasons.  So we bought a cheap smartphone and staying with the current PAYG plan which charges 1p per MB of data that would seem to allow her to send/receive 200 ish messages for less than the cost of a text.

Seems a logical plan if we can turn off everything that uses data in the background.

[pcolbeck]

So you are saying that in your example 16 sent messages and 188 received messages could use about 1MB.  Interesting!

The background is that Mrs R only uses her ancient BB for texting, currently at 2p per text.  Miss R would like her to use WhatsApp for various reasons.  So we bought a cheap smartphone and staying with the current PAYG plan which charges 1p per MB of data that would seem to allow her to send/receive 200 ish messages for less than the cost of a text.

Seems a logical plan if we can turn off everything that uses data in the background.

Also remember that when your connected to WiFi (eg at home) WhatsApp will use that and wont use any of your plans data at all.

[Russell]

Also remember that when you're connected to WiFi (eg at home) WhatsApp will use that and won't use any of your plan's data at all.

Indeed yes, I think this is a good plan.

[thing1]

If this in relation to mobile data plans, also bear in mind (or consider) that some contracts offer un-metered access to WhatsApp,
e.g. http://store.virginmedia.com/virgin-media-mobile/flexible-plans/free-whatsapp-facebook-messenger.html

[Jurek]

Awoogah!

[vorsprung]

In other words, how many individual messages could you send using a Mb of data?

Piece of string question I know but a rough estimate is all that's needed.

A 6-10 line email is in the 10s of kb sort of size, so I'm guessing a WhatsApp message could be similar.

Thanks

KJV Bible 4.3MB
complete works of shakespeare 5.2MB
Catcher in the Rye 382K