iCloud Drive and contacts sync on iOS 7

[lexvo]

I assume contacts and calendar syncing is independent of the use of iCloud Drive?

In other words: on iOS7 and older, you cannot use iCloud Drive but you can sync contacts and calender with iOS8 devices (and Yosemite). Correct?

The reason I ask is that there is no document or web page that explicitly states this. The support documents give a good description how to set things up, but nowhere is mentioned that iCloud Drive is a seperate thing within iCloud.
The only answers I got on other forums is that it “should work”. I’d like to here from someone who actually got this working

 

[exi]

Correct. Calendar and contact synchronization do not require use of iCloud Drive itself -- just an iCloud account like it did in the days before Drive.

When I updated iOS, my contacts and calendar info continued to sync while I was seeing the "upgrade to iCloud Drive?" type message.

 

[lexvo]

Thank you!