Here is what I got with my old phone. It is an Android running 2.3.5, I removed the SIM card, and I couldn't find the old SD card (which is really just like a flash drive for storing photos, etc). Having an SD card could be handy if you wanted to cache maps data for several areas, but it really isn't essential for the phone to work.
I had to connect to the WiFi at our house, and I had to connect the thing to my gmail account. After that I could run the "GPS Test" app, and it could see the satellites, and give me a good fix on location. The Maps app also seemed to work (it was giving me grief until I signed into my google account). In this version of Android, the cache of maps data is a sort of a beta, I guess, but once I found it and turned it on, it seemed to work well as I was headed into the office.
For any Android phone, having a google account is more or less required - that's how it keeps track of which apps you have purchased and all that. Fortunately google accounts are free, and you can either create a new one or attach the phone to any existing google/gmail account.
Apparently the map cache feature of Google Maps really became official in Android 3.0, but it is likely that the only way you can get such a device is to get one new, and that means spending $$$. With the version I tested, the cache is available from the "Labs". A little hard to find I guess, but it is there.
I might play with this some more myself over the next couple of days - this phone hadn't been powered up in nearly a year, and there are some quirks that I am curious about.