Smartphones used to use less data.
Yes, they did. Back when the "web browser" on a smartphone relied on a proxy to heavily compress and strip data and the type of web pages you could see on smartphone were vastly cut down from what a desktop could view. Also, back when smartphones were incapable of processing, let along displaying, high definition video, and before web streaming of content and cloud based services were common.
And iOS doesn't do anything spectacularly new to justify such a drastic increase of data usage.
I think I've listed several things that iOS "does" that explains the increase. AND Android AND Windows phone, AND Blackberry 10, by the way.
So basically everyone suggests that there's only to polar opposites of modern phones:
- the one who accepts high data usages as needed and necessary
- and the one who uses flip phones because he's to poor/dated/whatever to use smartphones.
That's just narrow-minded.
Actually what's narrow-minded are individuals who compare online services of today with the online services of the days before 3G, when sub-1Mbps speeds were the norm. Faster data means richer media is more common, not to mention services even at base levels that are improved and as a consequence, require greater data usage.
Even iMessage uses significantly more data than a traditional SMS, but for that trade-off, you get delivered/read receipts, recipient-is-typing notifications, the ability to communicate with non-phone devices, and much higher resolution photos, video and audio than traditional SMS can offer.
Completely ignoring this, and expecting the devices in the world to continue to use only as much data as was used back in 1999, is narrow-minded, not to mention looking at the problem form the wrong angle. The question shouldn't be "why is my phone using so much data?" It SHOULD be "why is my cellular carrier charging me more for data and giving me less of it?"
I couldn't contain iOS' data hunger for now. It's still the single highest usage I have. Maybe an update improves this, but I believe that this'll only get worse.
I can guarantee you, iOS 8 will only make it "worse." Not because of some carelessness on Apple's part, but because that's the direction cloud-based and online technologies are headed, like it or not. You have a very easy option if cellular data usage is unacceptable for you:
And, use Wifi instead.