Mobile death

My handset, a Nokia 6120, is sounding it's death rattle. It went a bit crazy last night and started shifting through profiles and then randomly putting 9s all over the screen. Today, things are progressively getting worse and I fear I may need to call for a phone priest soon for last rites.
I can't type w,x,y,z or 9 which is not great in an emergency situation let alone for typing in text in the browser.
Still, I've had it for four years nearly which in today's world of built in obsolence or inferior manufacture is not bad.
And what's the effect of not having a handset to hand - I have to resort to my PC to use Facebook, twitter, look up recipes, jobs, email, craft stuff, gossip and the thousand random things that pop into my head that one day will form a masterpiece to be proud of. Still, I wonder if I could survive without a phone - do I really need to be contactable and connected all day / night long?
I may have mentioned in the past, I used to be interface designer for handsets and one of the essentials of the job was using handsets which were usually loaned to our team for free. For a company handset again supplied free, I would just select a mobile plan (that would be discounted for employees) that fitted my needs and far greater budget. If a handset didn't perform well with my team's use cases, we would discard it and write a report on how to improve it for the manufacturer...sometimes they even listened to our team's ideas.
Choosing a phone and mobile plan, when I'm on a budget and when I can't try out the UI and hardware is a freaking nightmare. I find going into phone shops dispiriting as the models are static and most of the staff annoy me.
The network websites do not make it easy either especially when you also want to find out about PAYG and what the available data bundles are.
My dream handset would either be a HD Android 2.3 with a 8 megapix camera or a Windows 7 one (i.e. not now or ever an Apple, don't even bother trying to convince me). I also want to leave 3 as the network, how to phrase this politely, is a bit poor in Plumstead, North London and most of Scotland and basically anywhere esle I seem to go apart from Central London.
Sigh....my dreams far outweigh my needs and means and I'll probably settle for something less. It's so rubbish being on a budget and not being able to play with technology anymore :(