RIP BlackBerry Bold

Well, my BlackBerry has been acting up for the past 4 or 5 month. I pretty much had already decided to replace the thing, but since it still was working the majority of the times I just couldn't get myself to buy a new phone. With move to Austria coming up I had either to unlock the BlackBerry or buy a new phone, but the thing I wasn't going to do is to go through the hassle of having a device unlocked that's not working properly.
When all the issues started it was a minor inconvenience, as the BlackBerry was crashing probably 3 to 5 times a day. Over the past few month the system freezes got more and more frequently. But usually a hard restart normally did do the trick. I had noticed that it isn't so much a system crash as a display crash in the beginning and that leads to a full blown system crash. I've also noticed that, if I don't use the BlackBerry for a couple of hours I can do quite a number of actions on the phone without it freezing up. The more often I use the BlackBerry the more frequent the crashes got. Within the last week I had gotten so bad that I can send 1 text message before the thing crashes.
Well today the BlackBerry had the final system crash...and I haven't been able to get it to work since. Luckily I found my old cell phone and after reloading the battery in putting in the Sim card I had at least a working phone. I can't believe how much I've gotten used to a smart phone, as suddenly being without one really sucks!!
Well now I don't have choice and have to get a new phone. Luckily I already know what can of phone I want and it's going to be a 'free agent'. And on top of that it finally gives me the chance to get out of being locked into 2-year contracts.