Take a look at that.

Doesn’t it seem obvious that I need a new phone?

I’ve had this phone for only a couple of years, and before that it was my ex-best friend’s. She gave it to me when she upgraded, and it had fewer cracks in it then. My previous phone didn’t have great internet, or any capability of having apps.

I was able to transform this phone into a handheld nerve center of sorts.

1. I can check my email on it.
2. I can Tweet from my sports events on it.
3. Facebook is just a tap away.
4. I could check my message boards on it.
5. It stored more photos than my previous phone.
6. It holds notes, which I use for important numbers when I don’t like carrying my wallet.
7. I can search the internet with one tap.
8. I can even listen to the radio on it (but I don’t, because it drains battery)
9. I can record sound on it.
10. It even has a built-in GPS system (which I never use anyway)

Many other apps on it are only useful if I have a Google account, which I haven’t quite felt the need to have.

However, I would like to make it more of a handheld nerve center than what the phone, built in 2012, does already.

What my phone doesn’t do well is take good pictures. Nor does it upload them to my Facebook in a timely manner. Rather than taking my point-and-shoot digital camera, taking the picture, and switching the memory card from camera to phone, I would love to go boom-boom-boom from capture to upload. My phone doesn’t do that. Nor does my phone have great video quality, which is something that I really want to experiment with in journalism – uploading video to SVM’s Tout network of videos.

I don’t have any clue what the numbers when it comes to storage and capability are. I just want a better phone than what I have right now.

I have $250 I can spend toward getting a better phone. I see that the Samsung Galaxy S4’s and Apple iPhones are about $500, and I can’t see myself spending that much on a phone.

I wonder what phones out there have been useful.

However, I prefer a phone that is capable of using Straight Talk, as I enjoy the flat monthly fee without opening a bill to a surprising shock of a total. So, yes, my selection is pretty much limited to Wal-Mart, but getting another phone is a step in the right direction.