ive had a lot of cheap verizon phones, back from when they were bulky, had shit screens, and rubber buttons. no not the brick sized ones, but when they became more pocket friendly. then we ditched verizon cause they fucked over our phone bill and went to att and i got some ok cheapo phones through them, eventually got a sony ericsson flip phone... that damn thing was indestructible. dropped it like 50 times, drug flat bottomed recliner over it, ect. and the only thing to die was the cable shorting out between screen and phone.
last year i got a sony w580i which was awesome but they just flopped on quality. or i abused it too much. the earpiece speaker went bad and kinda vibrated, and the slider mechanism was a little cheap, but the internal menus were awesome and easy to use. i ended up breaking it a couple times and the second time they said they were out of them so they upped the model to the sony w860 which i have now, its awesome. i got a 4 gig card off newegg for 18 bucks, and the music player on it (it -is- a walkman phone) kicks ass with a detailed equilizer and some cool features. i got tired of carrying my mp3 player to school, and this makes it real convenient.
the camera also rocks for being a tiny 3mp one
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/phone/DSC00009.jpg
random photo of a lake from it
the menu's on sony's phone for settings and such are so much better than others... mom has a new blackberry and the piece of crap is impossible to change the ringtone on.