vB Easy Archive - Care to recommend me a new phone/plan?

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Care to recommend me a new phone/plan?
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Posted by: Powder

Well my 8525 crapped out last night to deem itself completely useless. After already having to get this $400 phone replaced twice, the AT&T warranty dept will do nothing for me because my phone is about a month out of warranty. Anyhoo, not gonna pout about it, I'll just get a new phone. The good news is I am way out of contract so I can shop any carrier I'd like. However, I think I am done with smartphones for a while. Although I love having all the conveniences in my pocket at all times, after all the problems I've had with my Treo and now the 8525, I'm just tired of dealing with them and don't want to put up with the frustration of them breaking so easy.

So here is what I'm looking for, trying to simplify things a bit. Bluetooth is a must. At work I am on the road about 80% of the time and have to make several phone calls while driving. Also, I'd like to have a voice dialing feature. I've heard that you can just say the numbers into the phone or your bluetooth headset and it will actually dial those numbers for you. I haven't been able to find that info myself though, maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places. Considering I have to dial many numbers that I don't have stored in my phone while driving, this would be a huge convenience for me.

I want to be able to listen to music on my phone. I enjoy being able to listen to music on my bluetooth headset while at the gym while my phone is in my gym bag in the corner. An expansion slot for external memory would also be nice, such as some sort of SD slot.

As far as what I want in a plan, I probably average around 500 daytime minutes a month, which kind of sucks because I've noticed most plans just from 450 to 900. I have to make several sporadic calls anywhere from 11am to 10pm, with many of these calls being less than a minute. I send anywhere from 1000 to 1500 text messages a month.

I hate roaming fees. I've been with Cingular/AT&T for the past 5 years because of this. Although I'm disgruntled with them right now and am looking at other carriers, their nation plans seem to be the best for this. Either that or the plans I'm looking at on the sites of Alltel, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile are deceiving me.

I need to get a new phone ASAP, considering I don't have one that will actually work at the current time. Thanks for your help.