Thanks all for the comments and suggestions. AS far as the Android apps go, need is maybe too strong of a word. It's more like there are apps available on Android that I wouldn't necessarily use daily, but they are things that can make my life a bit easier when the need comes up. I currently use my wife's Android phone for this as the need comes up, and she's mostly been patient with this, but it would be nice to have the capability on my own.

As far as the various plans go, I'm in kind of a unique situation in that I currently don't pay anything for my Verizon voice plan. If I was to upgrade to a smartphone on Verizon I would start paying for both voice and data, and my company would reimburse me for the data portion...but that would still mean I'd end up paying about $30 more per month than I currently do. The other option is to go with a T-Mobile no contract plan, which will give me "unlimited" data and unlimited texts, plus 100 minutes of voice per month. My company would pay for the T-mobile plan, and I wouldn't lose my free voice minutes on Verizon. But it does mean that doing a cheap Android phone + a dumbphone + either a N9 or N900 would be one too many devices to carry around with me.