Re: LG Fathom, LG Ally or what?
 

It almost sounds like you should get a Tablet. That said, my wife has the Ally and it runs quite well and gets actually surprisingly good battery life. And the keyboard is actually very nice too.

Another option is if you have unlimited texting you can drop it in favor of Google Voice and text using that and pay only $10 more a month for the data plan. Just a thought.