What is the best phone to replace a Helio Ocean with?

[Sean G]

I had a helio ocean for the past few years aand had to give it up last summer because of helio/virgin's takeover by sprint. I got an HTC Hero as a replacement, and I absolutely hate it. The phone lags all the times, the texting sucks, the touchscreen sucks, calls are dropped all the time, the apps crash constantly, even the PHONE function itself freezes up and I won't be able to dial. Sometimes it will take over an hour for a text to be received by my phone. Absolutely terrible annd dangerous phone to own. So my question is, what phone on the market today would best replicate the helio ocean experience? tactile buttons dual slide, SOLID construction, apps and gizmos not required, reliable easy to use keyboard and phone function with bulletproof reliability a must. Im seriously thinking of switching to cricket and flashing my old ocean to their network if a better phone can't be found. I'm on Sprints network, but willing to relocate for the right phone!
I forgot to mention, I would like GPS, email and a basic internet browser. The opera mini browser on my ocean was better than any of the new phones, way fast and suited my basic needs which was usually searching for businesses and locations on the internet. A camera would be nice too, and a flash that could double as a flashlight.

[John]

I agree about Opera Mini! Love it! I briefly owned a Helio Ocean. Maybe you should consider Straight Talks Nokia E71 ? Straight Talk runs over the AT&T network. Nokia e71 is a great phone, it has a great feel qwerty keyboard and lots of gizmos such a front facing camera for live video calls and also you can put Skyfire browser on it which renders flash. You can get the phone for 250.00 and the monthly plan is 45.00 prepaid for unlimited text messaging unlimited calling and unlimited data & GPS. You can also put Opera Mini on it. You know how all the Android phones have the Android store? Nokia has the Ovi Store, not as many apps as Android but still nice. If you really want to stay with Sprint because of coverage or whatever then you should check out the Sprint Samsung Intrepid. This phones qwerty keyboard also has a great feel and you could put Opera Mobile on it.

[Ben]

for you, i would suggest the upcoming htc arrive because windows phone 7 has a good browser, gps, nice construction, keyboard, and wp7 is very stable. the arrive will be available on sprint on 3/20/11 and it will have a camera with flash that can be used as a flashlight. Its camera is 5 megapixels it has a 1ghz processor, 576 megabytes of ram. There are reviews already up. (Links are in source)