Even with binary protocols, compression is worthwhile. No matter your serialization format, most of the bytes transferred are going to be payload. And most of the time, that payload is going to have redundancies. Also, modern implementations of decompression algorithms are very efficient. Mobile SoCs can approach 100MB&#x2F;sec for deflate. In other words: If your phone downloads 10GB of compressed data a month, it&#x27;s going to use an extra 3-4 seconds of CPU time per day. That&#x27;s a rounding error. In fact, it&#x27;s quite possible that the radio power savings outweigh that extra CPU usage.