Rezound is the 2nd best phone in the world right now so it's not surprising you love the way it looks. the feel and quality are also top notch and that thing is said to go through 2G/3G/4G seemlessly, so if there's connection you will always get it.
a couple things to take note here. Verizon is basically just the US witht heir phones, so if you're going overseas it probably won't work - since you're military i don't know how much this matters to you. you'd otherwise be stuck with t-mobile and at&t as they're GSM, which allows you to swap the sim card. consider checking out places like amazon instead of just verizon directly. or hell, consider calling them instead of going to a store. if you aren't on contract then they do tend to have a LOT of frequent deals.
as for the little things:
1) data plans don't cover texting.
2) data plans are required to any on-contract phone. you DON'T get them shoved into your face
3) the main carriers of at&t and verizon have the highest costs on their plans. worse than that, Verizon's data is actually capped, so you do get limited on this.
i can check around to see what sales carriers have right now, but you prob wanna know in advance whether Sprint or T-Mobile are okay. T-Mobile doesn't have the best of the best phones often, but they do have some solid gems out there, current one being the HTC One S. AT&T has the One X, the best phone out there period right now, but it is rather large (yet if you like large phones, and if you think 4.3" is sexy you probably do, this will be more of a pro than a con). Sprint... i'm not sure what they got. and if you really want to go large, there's the Galaxy Note, which is enormous (5.3") but doubles as a mini tablet. a lot of people get put off by it at first, but it's just really, really good and you get used to the feel quickly.
there IS the option of the Google Nexus as well. nothing wrong with it, it's pretty new and a top 5 phone in the world today (HTC One X, HTC Rezound = top 2, HTC One S, Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Nexus = 3 to 5, mix those up depending on preferences), and Google straight up offers it themselves, no contract, for $400. this would allow you to go on pre-paid plans, which are honestly a billion times better as they're cheaper than the month to month due to them not requiring a data package and the carriers aren't recooping the cost of the phone on their own, they allow more freedom so you can get on and off the plan, and you can sell it without a problem if push came to shove. however you'll be able to use it only on AT&T and T-Mobile for the major US carriers since it's a GSM phone. on the other hand, it pretty much works on ANYTHING and is pretty unique at that job, so if travel's a concern then you really can't do better. if the frontloaded cost is not a problem, then you've got the best choice right there. if you don't mind ebay you can probably even find it for less since google cut it to that price.
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The King Wang.
Listen up Urinal Cake. I already have something that tells me if I'm too drunk when I pee on it: My friends. - Colbert.