Like WM phones, it's usually pointless to "upgrade" to a second Android phone

The practical reason for changing an Android phone to another Android phone.

True, hardware specification might be quite different from handset to handset, but the core of the phone are usually the same.

As the moment, you can't expect 

• a safe Bluetooth file transfer feature
• a real radio function (i.e. not via Internet)
• alarm when power-off

While the buddies on xda-developer.com keep trying to break the Bluetooth restriction, the radio one is a hardware constraint that it is not possible to change.

The power-off alarm function, however, is an Operating-System level constraint.  I remember that my very first mobile phone 10 years ago could wake me up even if it was switch off.  While most phone running proprietary system will easily have alarm when you switch off the phone, those "smarter" phone systems, including Android and also Windows Mobile, cannot have this feature.  This is kind of lame, but we might have to realise the rationale behind this.

When an Android or a Windows phone is switch off, the entire operating system won't run, except the clock, which will consume a tiny flow of battery.  While it is relatively easy to trigger the alarm time based on the clock, the problem is to get the phone ringing, it would not be able to sound without fully launching the phone.

If you pay enough attention to new Android phones spouted by so many brands – HTC G1/Magic/Hero/Dragon etc, Samsung Galaxy, that Motorola "Droid" monstrosity, Sony Ericsson Xperia x3 – they only have slight differences.  With or without keyboard, CPU choice, ROM size, camera resolution, screen size.  The operating system is, however, the same.  A very basic G1 should be enough for newbies to familiarize with the system.

I have tried both HTC Dream (G1) and HTC Hero (G2), in some cases Dream served me better than Hero, especially if I were texting heavily.