Cell phones, and the Costs applied

There are somethings we all wonder.... this is one of my personal questions on a monthly basis. Is it worth having a contract phone versus a pay as you go phone?
I guess it would depend on what you would want out of your phone. Iphones (Which I currently have) are only available via a contract with a specific company (I use sprint). How ever the Android phones are now available vie no contract/pay as you go. One of my favorite places to drool over the option is strait talk. If you haven't seen it yet, you can find the site here. It has the sim card for transfer into jail-broken phones, so you can get more bang for your buck if you wanted to go that direction. $45.00 dollars a month is pretty amazing, seeing as I'm paying $80 a month to do essentially do the same thing but with more options for me to get over charged by sprint on my roaming, which it seems in Durham and Raleigh the towers are never working. Seems that companies are going the unethical route just to make money, or as we all know it the bottom line. This leads into so many more questions with all these companies charging so much, why are we buying into being ripped off by them? Is my Iphone really worth being stuck with a terrible company for two years? I have a discount for working for one of the larger companies in technology (they wont be name but it's only three letters.... take a lucky guess.) I'm sure this will lead into some ethical political debate at some point so I'll stop before I get carried away.
Below I will give you a series of links, before you think about switching to another contract you will be stuck with, these will give you more options. Some of the links are regional so just keep that in mind.
Atlanta/ Miami area options
Damn near Everywhere(depends on the phone)
This one varies...
You also want to check the larger companies for the pay as you go options they have.

AT&T Blue Z221 GoPhone Prepaid Cellular Phone - Z221