The woman needs a new phone

My wife and I have the Incredible 2 and we both love it. It is rootable but requires you to downgrade to 2.3.3 first. Lots of ROMs are out for this phone. A few ICS ROMs are in the works.

With that said, the Incredible 3 (or 4G?) is rumored to be released later this month.

 

Have you tried putting putting an ICS Rom on the Fascinate? There are quite a few that run super smooth with minimal issues. I have never ran stock but have tried a friend's who had a stock VZW one and yes is wasn't good.

The AOKP ICS Rom for the Fascinate is amazing. It has no issues and I have seen some comparison videos between a Fascinate and Galaxy Nexus running it and there is very little or no difference, minus the 4G speeds. After putting it on my phone I really see no need to upgrade for a long time.

If you haven't tried it, I say give it a go before you change her to another phone.

 

Its actually super easy, just follow the instructions step by step and it will be fine.

Supa's Useless Information: How to flash ICS on the Samsung Fascinate!

This link is the instructions for flashing the Team Hacksung build. I have tried it and AOKP and found AOKP to be better for me. But the intructions are actually the same for flashing AOKP. Just substitute the AOKP build for the Version 8 build in the intructions. Also use AOKP Gapps file instead.

Latest AOKP build, use build 32.1
Index of /aokp/fascinate/

Gapps file found on bottom of the page
Build 32 - Releases - Releases - News

Remember that everything will be wiped so its like starting from day one. You can backup programs with Titanium backup but I have always found starting completely from scratch to be the best option, guess it really just depends if you can tolerate downloading her apps again.

 

my wife loves the htc rhyme. It's very stable, never locks up, battery life is great, and all around just a solid phone. She doesn't do too much "heavy lifting" with it, but she does use the gps, and the kids play games on it alot.

If you're getting it for free, it's the way to go.

 

It might be slightly big for her, but you might consider the new galaxy nexus.
It stable, its ics, its simplistic and gets, and will get even more developer support.

If i was to choose a new device right now for either myself or my wife, i would go with the galaxy nexus.