Help me. I'm 62 years old. I've proudly lived my entire life without a cell phone. Unfortunately I just started a new job and i have to do some work travel. So I need a phone. All I want to do is call and text, and I don't want to do much of that. So what do I get? What is a burner phone. Locked? Unlocked? What? Thanks.
Give some thought to what Shinyribs said.
Get a phone that's internet capable. It'll probably be another 20 bucks if any extra price at all. Just having the GPS and ability to look up a phone number on the fly is worth it. If you decide you hate it ( unlikely) just drop the data from your service plan.
We don't know what your new job entails, but a "smartphone" (most people just call them "phones" today) is a powerful tool that can be useful for a wide variety of things. You don't have to use a bunch of apps (applications = programs) or anything complicated.
Just think of a phone as a small, portable computer, similar to the one you already use to access the internet. If you already use Apple products, an iPhone would make sense, but Android (Android is an operating system developed by Google) based phones (basically everything that isn't an iPhone) work fine. There's no need to buy the latest model, either. They're nice, but aren't cheap, and older phones once were the latest model.
At any point in purchasing whatever you select, if you feel overwhelmed or don't understand something, stop the process and ask for an explanation. In my experience, phone & phone plan salespeople may rush through the process or use jargon that gets in the way of understanding what it is you're buying. You wouldn't buy a car with a salesman zipping through the contract like that, and buying a phone is no different.