I was surprised when I got an email offering me to do an early upgrade (from my S3) using the Edge plan. I had been curious about it, so I dropped into a store just to get some straight answers about the Edge. The Edge was what I figured it was, and sounded ok, until they said I'd have to give up my unlimited plan. However when I mentioned that, the Verizon store rep said he could move me to a 6 GB/month plan for the same money as my unlimited, without a contract extension. Well, that made a difference for me, because most of the time, I didn't use any more than 2 GB, but did sometimes go up to 3 GB a month. So my early upgrade worked wonderfully. Only thing was I had to just give them my Note 2 that I had bought off of Ebay, not from them.
Oh well, I hated to just turn in my old phone as I tend to get really good money from selling "old" phones on Ebay, but overall, I'm happy with that.