Cellphones: Old vs New

Has anyone ever noticed that, while your mum's old Nokia phone is still going strong after five years, your brand new phone is already having problems?
A couple of months ago, my friend's Amena phone (she got it in Spain) died, so she used *dun, dun, duuuuuun*... Her Alcatel One Touch Easy, which is 7 years old! The new phone was less than two years old. It's a conspiracy!
I just got a new Sony Ericsson phone for Christmas, and the 8 key is already sticky, which makes texting a nightmare. I recognise that, with constant upgrades, all of us should be getting a new phone every year, but not all of us are the good little consumers that the cellphone companies expect us to be.
Admittedly, some old phones don't accomodate texting, and in the case of the One Touch Easy (I'm talking the very first one, bought when the network still came up as BellSouth) you can't retrieve numbers from the phonebook when you're sending a text, but the sturdiness of the old phones can't be denied. Why can't we just merge the sturdiness of the old and the PXTiness of the new? If anyone knows a phone which has achieved this, please feel free to tell me.

N.B: The same goes for Discman vs Walkman ;)