New Phone advice needed

Well I was just in formed by my dad today that he upgraded the sprint family plan to unlimited everything. I have a 2.5 year old motorola krazr thats seen better days, the front is cracked the screen is cracked and its time for a new phone.

the plan is to order one off of ebay and switch over my cdma information or however that works.(if anyone has the site that would be appreciated) and then I will be able to use data, text, and voice.

I have never texted as that was not on the previous plan but would really like to start so I think that a new phone with a touchscreen and qwerty texting would suit me. especially in college over here everybody texts and I'm left in the dark a few times because of it.

wifi/internet browsing is not as important but would be a plus.

My brother and father ordered the Samsung Instinct and I am wondering if I should do the same, just want to ask here to see if their are better phones out there for my fit.

Thank you

My son age 27 has the Samsung Instinct and loves it;
I have a Treo 755p and love it.
Hope this helps

hey I just ordered the phone off ebay for about $100, I met two people last night that had the same phone and messed around with it...I like what I see so far.

I've heard good and bad about the instinct. Positives on the instinct is that it's a slick looking phone, good for texting because of the key layout, and overall is reliable. It's good for accessing the web, but it's no iphone. Battery life is about a day from normal use. from people i know that have it complain of the speeds of site downloads and that you can't access as many sites as the iphone browser allows you to. they did come out with a newer instinct recently so maybe all that's improved. everyone i know has a 1st gen.

there's many choices for texting, it all depends on you and what's comfortable in your hands for typing. I've had sprint for 7 years and I can tell you the best phone's are Sanyo's then Samsungs, bulletproof reliablity, excellent software, SQ. I just switched to a Motorola Renegade about 7 months ago and the software is twitchy, not very reliable as compared to samsungs/sanyo's.

I currently have the LG Musiq and while it doesnt have the slide out keyboard I love it. I have had it for three years now with absolutly no issues. So.. yueah