Have to disagree with your two questions. With the second, I think your age is showing a bit - now that unlimited texting is generally included in all plans, 2 dozen texts/day is probably on the low side for many (most?) people. As to the first question, as mentioned earlier in this thread, the cycling through phones is, if not common, also not unheard of.
I think the two better questions are
-why destroy the phone that day?
-if the previous phones are always destroyed, why is the older one around?