You don't have to get a phone with a full keyboard. Flip phones work just fine for text messaging, especially if your local rep can explain T9 texting to ya.

As far as your plan goes, we can't get your old one back. USC retired any previous plans and now only have Belief Plans (exception would be one plan for modems). So with only Belief Plans in place, your old one is truly lost, but you get all the benefits of not signing a contract, earning reward points, auto-pay discount, ect.