Both my wife and son have the Samsung 5 neither one of them ever turn on cellular data and they can stand in the middle of a farm field take a picture and text it to another person.  I also have an old Cosmo texting phone and I can also stand in the middle of Mojave desert take a picture and text the picture

I cannot do this with the Pixel phone.  I have also found that in order to listen to my voice mail I have to turn on cellular data.

The conspiracy side of me says Google and Version have teamed up to derive up consumer cost by driving up data.