you can always buy a phone or you can cancel the contract but pay a fee. If the phone is messing up I suspect verizon would help repair or replace it. I go through a couple phones a year. As long as there isn't damage, water or dropping it, they give me a new phone free. Sometimes it is buttons sticking, charging ports quit working etc. Understand I don't get a new phone usually it is refurbished and it is identical to the phone I have. I do not upgrade or getting a better device.
Really, why not go to verizon, tell them how unhappy you are with the phone and see what they will do for you? It really helps if you can explain what is messing up. Like visual voice mail doesn't work, dropping calls all the time. My minutes dropped 2/3 because I kept dropping calls and I started using land lines. Verizon could fix my phone or I was dropping to the lowest minute plan which would have saved me $1000 year, Verizon would rather give me a new phone than lose $1000 from a customer and at the end of the contract they would have lost me to a competitor.
