Here's the situation:

My wife and I are currently on a 2 line family plan contract which
expires in September. The contract is in her name because a couple of
years ago when we decided that it would be cheaper if we gave up our
individual plans, my contract ran out first and I joined her plan. We
have both been SPCS customers for more than ten years. I have Vision at
$10.00/month on my line because I use email and text messaging for
business (and checking sports scores). My wife has voice only because
she just uses her phone for, well, telephone conversations.

Recently, my wife has started to be bombarded by Sprint reps calling her
on her SPCS phone to try to talk her into extending her contract, even
though it still has several months remaining. They seem to be offering
nothing more than what we already have in the way of price and features,
except for the offer of two free new phones. Coincidentally, her company
has been pressuring her lately to upgrade her phone to one on which she
can send and receive email, because she is part of an emergency response
team.

My LG LX350 does everything I need in terms of email and texting. The
text messages are mainly incoming to notify me of voice calls, emails,
or faxes that have been received at my unified message center. I can
read the emails using Opera Mini, and I can respond either by a phone
call or by waiting until I am back in my office and can send a reply
email from my computer, so I rarely have to deal with typing a message
on the phone's keypad. My wife, on the other hand, may need to respond
to emails immediately, at any time, from wherever she happens to be, and
her messages are by nature long and complex, so she will need a phone
with an easy to use full QWERTY keyboard. She does not, however, need
much in the way of bells and whistles, because she uses the phone to
communicate and nothing more. She has no interest in games, TV, music,
applications other than email, or web browsing on the phone. (In fact,
Sprint has told her that she has to replace her ancient Sanyo SCP-4500
if she ever expects to need to roam again, because it only supports
analog roaming, and apparently they will soon offer only digital
roaming).

So here's what we need:

Myself: Fine with the phone and options I have now.

My wife: Simplest available email capable phone with full keyboard and
decent screen size (her eyesight is not the best).

I would also like to leverage Sprint's eagerness to extend our contract
to try to get some concessions on plan pricing. The current family
plans, it seems to me, are very limited in what they include and force
you to pay full price for add-ons like internet access. I see no reason
why we should have to pay $25/month for Power Vision with a PDA phone
when Vision at $15/month will suffice for our needs, but Power Vision is
the only option listed for those phones.

Questions:

What phones should we be looking at for my wife?

What kinds of 2 line plans might be out there that are not easily
discovered on the Sprint web site?

Are there any current long time customer reward incentives being offered
by Sprint?

Thanks for any feedback.
--
schrodinger's cat