Jean-Paul was right. I bought a new phone, and it's a indeed smartphone, the BlackBerry Pearl.

I looked at perhaps switching over to AT&T, but their plans were more expensive than Verizon, and Verizon gave me a sizable credit towards a new handset -- after the mail-in rebate the phone is free.

I thought data plans were around $70, but prices have come down quite a bit and I bought a $30 data plan that provides virtually unlimited data usage (5 GB monthly). The phone has full internet access, and I've connected my hotmail account to it. I installed Google maps as well, which is really quite useful on a handset.