i have a verizon droid eris, i used to have a hacked iphone working on verizon, the iphone didnt have a dataservice since it was hacked but it didnt everything an iphone can do (text, web browse, apps) i love the droid way more than the iphone the only thing i miss is touchgrind lol. most of my friends and family now have a droid of some sort.
Droid looks really badass, but it's also $199 on top of a $100+ / mo. plan. I need to see what the 450 minute plan entails in reference to texting usage.
I would say get a blackberry with a full keyboard, I don't have one myself but will get one when I redo contract.
I have Verizon here in Tyler only because it was Alltel until Verizon bought them out, and I always have perfect reception. The phone I do use has a sliding keyboard and it is so much easier to type on that just the regular numerical pad.