I've never paid (directly) for a cell phone (just signed contracts). One of the things I got for my birthday a few weeks ago was a barely used LG enV that my stepfather had just upgraded from. It was an upgrade from my Razor V3. Ok, so it wasn't so much a birthday present as a "since you're here, do you want this?"
I switched over to Verzion about 6 months back and got the enV2 for about $50 (2 sets of bass strings for those that compute prices in musical items). I recently was playing around with a friend's enV and it couldn't hang with its second-generation brethren (enV2). Don't get me wrong, the enV was revolutionary in its text-happy goodness, but the enV2 just took it to another level, fo' sho'.