Just out of curiosity, what brand and model is your phone? If it's not Sony Ericsson or Nokia, I'd seriously doubt whatever advice you got when buying it.

As you probably know, the reason phones have all the "useless" features is not because you want them, but because the cellular provider (who is the customer of the companies that make phones) wants features that you will pay money for on a per use basis. Their entire bussiness plan these days is "give the phone away, pretty much give the monthly service away, and gouge them on the nickle&dime features".

Personally, I'm completely different from you, and enjoy many of the features on my current phone. I can type in the name of a bussiness and it'll tell me how far away it is, the address, and phone number. I can be anywhere I get phone service and open up my laptop andconnect to the internet, which means I can work anywhere. When I get in my car, the audio automatically goes through my empeg, and I don't have to fumble for the phone, and can make calls safely while shifting gears.

On the other hand, I've never bought a ring tone, I generally pick the ring that sounds the most like a plain old telephone. I send a text message every other month, because 10c to sent 2kb of data is outrageous. A friend of mine changed the wallpaper on my phone to a picture from the camera, but I've never messed with it, and I certainly wouldn't pay money for a wallpaper. However, all these features are what Sprint was counting on when I bought the phone. I suspect I'm a huge disappointment as a customer.

Matthew