The Smart Phone Dilemma

Well, I think it's almost time, folks. Almost time for me to get a Smart phone. I've resisted for many reasons, most notably that I don't want to become dependent on it or spend more of my life than I already do online. To be honest, I find it discouraging to look around the room at a party or around the table at a restaurant and see every single person staring at their phone. I'd rather talk and enjoy people's company now and look up videos and sports scores later. So I worry I'll become one of these people who uses their phone constantly simply because it's there.

To be clear, this is exactly what will happen to me once I take the plunge (I'm not sure there's a way around it), but what's got me almost to the point of getting one anyway is that despite turning into a Smart phone zombie, I can still see several benefits to having one. The ability to text pictures (without having to pay for them) is high on the list, as is the ability to email pictures and even upload them to, say, Twitter. Right now I don't have any Insta-gram type of capabilities, and while I know this seems like a lot of picture-ish reasons, I confess that the ability to capture and share moments as they come up is surprisingly important to me. Other things like no longer having to print boarding passes would be pretty neat, and even though I'm not sure I'll ever be the kind of person who has to look up a YouTube video at the precise moment someone tells me about it, the internet would probably come in handy sometimes when out and about.

So now it's just a matter of pulling the trigger. Well, that, and what phone to actually get. I'm overwhelmed at the very thought. Any suggestions?