...aren't necessarily useless after the contract is over and you've acquired the new one...
i have recently repurposed an old iPhone 3GS as an iPod touch, something it does pretty well. and my wife's retired HTC Android is now serving as a GPS, thanks to
OsmAnd, an OpenSource GPS program for Androids that uses OpenSreetMap data. so don't assume that the old phones don't have a purpose any more, they can still slurp up and export data via wifi, and can run useful programs.
what i have learned, though, is that usually they won't come up unless they have a sim. the good news is that any sim will do, even old ones that have been deactivated by the carrier. put the sim in, "activate" the phone, take the sim out and put it in airplane mode. this works similarly on iphones and on androids in my experience.
