For the past year I've been using an LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile. The phone cost $150 and was bought contract free. The service for me is $25 a month. That

For the past year I've been using an LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile. The phone cost $150 and was bought contract free. The service for me is $25 a month. That includes 300 minutes of talk time and unlimited data (which has really been unlimited for me. They did recently institute a 2.5 gigabyte limit beyond which you get throttled down to 256Kbps, but for the price I'm paying that seems more than fair). The unlimited data is effectively unlimited talk time since I have my phone set up to use my Google Voice number via SIP to handle inbound and outbound calls and I'm not that big on talking on the phone all the time in any case. The Optimus V is hardly the top of the line when it comes to Android phones but it gives me everything I want out of an Android smartphone -- the full Google Nav turn by turn GPS functionality (killer feature #1 for a smartphone for me, and the reason I wouldn't trade Android for an iPhone even if the prices were identical -- and I used to be an iPhone user, I used the iPhone 3G for 2 years), tethering of my laptop and/or ASUS Transformer tablet/netbook (killer feature #2) and Google Voice (killer feature #3). Everything else the phone does is gravy after that. YMMV and your prices may vary since the $25 rate is grandfathered in (even though, as I mentioned, I wasn't under any contract -- which is pretty cool), I think the rate for new users is $35. But I've been very happy with Virgin Mobile and the Optimus V.